A New Approach to Understanding Dahl Rereading Toxic Childism

Master Thesis in

English Language and Culture

A New Approach to Understanding Dahl Rereading Toxic Childism

Supervised by dr. B.P. Moore Marleen Bartels Student ID 10004505 University of Amsterdam Faculty of Humanities Department of Literature English Literature 29 June 2018

Table of Contents

Introduction: Dahl and The Discussion on Suitability 2

1. Obsessional Childism in Matilda 10

1.1. Young-Bruehl on Obsessional Childism 10

1.2. An Introduction to Obsessional Childism in Matilda 11

1.3. Obsessional Childism at Home: The Wormwoods 11

1.4. Obsessional Childism at School: Miss Trunchbull 17

1.5. Folklore: Matilda’s Powers 20

1.6. Miss Honey 22

1.6. Conclusion 24

2. Narcissistic Childism in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory 27

2.1. Young-Bruehl on Narcissistic Childism 27

2.2. An Introduction to Narcissistic Childism in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory 30

2.3. The Children 31

2.4. Willy Wonka: Narcissist and Master Manipulator 35

2.5. Charlie and Grandpa Joe: The Naive “Heroes” 39

2.6. Conclusion 42

3. Hysterical Childism in George’s Marvellous Medicine and James and the Giant Peach 44

3.1 Young-Bruehl on Hysterical Childism 44

3.2 Hysterical Childism in Dahl 46

3.3 Hysterical Childism in George’s Marvellous Medicine 46

3.4 Narcissistic and Hysterical Grandma 47

3.5 Hysterical Childism in James and The Giant Peach 51

3.6 Hysterical Insects 53

3.7 Conclusion 57

Conclusion 60

Introduction: Dahl and The Discussion on Suitability

It is known that Roald Dahl’s extensive oeuvre consists of works for both children and adults. Dahl started writing short stories for adults and did so for approximately fifteen years. After the sole publication of literary texts for an adult target audience, his first children’s book, James and the Giant Peach, was published in 1961. When Dahl was asked in an interview (1990) what instigated his audience switch, he replied that having children was the reason:

I always told them stories in bed, and they started asking for some of the stories over and over. I was in New York at the time, and I didn’t have a plot for a short story, so I decided to have a go at doing a children’s book. (West, “Interview with Roald Dahl” 63)

Roald Dahl’s second children’s book, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory (1964), was published three years later than his first and became an even bigger success. The number of sales of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory in America grew exponentially from 7,000 in the first year to approximately 80,000 by the fifth year (ibid. 64). Due to their popularity, Dahl’s children’s books not only received an abundance of praise, but also of negative criticism. Much of this criticism stems from the educational field and concentrates on questioning whether Dahl’s work is appropriate for children. The books have been criticised for their “vulgarity, fascism, violence, sexism, racism, occult overtones, promotion of criminal behaviour, and literary technique” (Culley 59). Eleanor Cameron, in “McLuhan, Youth, and Literature: Part I” (1972), specifically claimed that Dahl’s Charlie and The Chocolate Factory was “one of the most tasteless books ever written for children” (Cameron).

Accordingly, there has been much debate about the research on Dahl’s literary texts. Critic Jonathon Culley, in his article “Roald Dahl – ‘It’s About Children and It’s for Children’ – But Is It Suitable?” (1991), for example, explores “the fascination of Dahl’s work” (59), i.e., why it has been criticised this much and whether it has any merit. In her book

De-constructing Dahl (2015), Laura Valle notes that “very little scholarly work has been produced” (2) on Dahl and that the scholarly work that has been produced “focus[es] on a handful of controversial aspects which, as Butler put it, ‘tend to collapse into binary questions about whether he is a good writer or a bad one, honest or dishonest, authoritarian or subversive, moral or immoral’” (3). Not only does this mean that relatively little readings of the Dahl children’s books have been accomplished (looking at the author’s vast oeuvre), but it also indicates the limited scope with which the books have been read by the majority of literary scholars and critics. Therefore, this thesis aims to re-evaluate the themes relevant to the aforementioned discussion visible within Dahl’s children’s books and seeks to apply a newly formed literary tool in order to refrain from merely pointing out binaries and create a contemporary, encompassing reading of childism in Dahl’s work. To be able to analyse his literary texts, it is important to look at Dahl’s own perspective first before introducing the discussion itself; he had an outspoken opinion about the characteristics of an author of children’s books and shows his personal awareness of the discussion regarding the suitability of his texts for adult and child target groups. In BBC documentary The Marvellous World of Roald Dahl (2016), Dahl discusses what, according to him, makes a “competent writer”. Dahl believes that only “undeveloped” adults with “an enormous amount of childishness in [them]” (The Marvellous World) can be competent writers. Additionally, he feels that most adults are “pompous” and “conformist” (ibid.). He uses “adult” as an adjective simultaneously with “pompous”, indicating that it is pejorative and that the word “adult” has similar negative connotations to “pompous”. This strongly implies a preference for a child audience over an adult one, since he does not consider children to be “pompous” (ibid.). In other words, Dahl believed that the average, conformist adult could never be a competent writer for children, because they are already too corrupted by society, have lost all their childishness, and are expected to follow that same path. Dahl himself, however, still “giggle[d] at funny stories and

jokes and things” (ibid.) and thus was not a conformist adult, according to his own words. Considering this, literary critics of Dahl’s works for children have arguably missed a critical lens through which to interpret the stories: that of childism.

Most of Dahl’s critics focus on the propriety of his children’s fiction. For instance, Richter exploring themes of danger in “Roald Dahl and Danger in Children’s Literature” (2015) or West focusing on the “grotesque and taboo” in “The Grotesque and the Taboo in Roald Dahl’s Humorus Writings for Children” (1990). However, James M. Curtis’s article “‘We Have a Great Task Ahead of Us!’: Child-Hate in Roald Dahl’s The Witches” (2014) discusses the explicit hatred of, abuse of, and violence towards children by adults in one of Roald Dahl’s last children’s books, The Witches (1983). In his abstract, Curtis states that “Dahl’s text counters the notion that we have progressed to a culture that values and, at times, sacralizes the child” (166). Curtis accurately demonstrates that Dahl’s works are for children and thus are written with the idea of children as requiring protection. Curtis makes the excellent point that “the history of childhood is loaded with violence, indifference toward and blatant antipathy for the child that, at times, exceeds the cruelty of anything Dahl’s witch characters ever do to their child victims” (167). Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, psychoanalyst and author of Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children (2012), defines childism in the broadest sense as “prejudice against children” (4). She claims that ever since the term was coined in the 1970s people did not want to (nor were able to) acknowledge that such a notion existed. Young-Bruehl discusses this in the introduction of her book by stating that society was supposedly becoming increasingly more “child-centered” (ibid. 5), but that this was only on the surface. She mentions the progress made in certain areas, such as the advancement in the field of Child Advocacy, yet a true re-evaluation is not accomplished: “despite these advances, since the 1970s childism has grown more intense” (ibid. 13). With this in mind, one could interpret Curtis’ statement about the history of childhood as lending credence to

Young-Bruehl’s theory that childism is indeed still present in contemporary society. Additionally, Curtis emphasises that child-hate is “a danger made ever more threatening by its ability to hide under a mask of benevolence” (166). In other words, without using the term itself, Curtis links childism to one of Dahl’s works. The idea that children are often (violently) abused and mistreated is a concept found in Young-Bruehl’s definition of “childism” and is therefore an excellent theoretical lens through which to interpret Dahl’s children’s fiction.

Building on case studies of abused children, Young-Bruehl defines three different types of childism based on three different character types found among adults who abuse children. These, in turn, are based on Freud’s three character types: obsessional, narcissistic, and hysterical (Young-Bruehl 47). Young-Bruehl briefly explains Freud’s character types as “the configurations or clusters of traits resulting from a unique maturational journey with typical features” (ibid. 47). She adds that “Freud … found that the types themselves were quite useful for recognizing common orientations towards the world and the actions that follow from such orientations” (ibid. 48), which is precisely what Young-Bruehl used them for in relation to the concept of childism. Furthermore, Young-Bruehl explains that

[i]n the Freudian theory, people’s characters do not cause their prejudices. Rather, their projections of shame and of guilty self-hatred or their distorted, fantasy-driven desires cause the prejudices. Each individual’s prejudice is thus distinctive, discoverable only through a focused study of his or her fantasies and projections. But because people’s characters determine how their projections form into prejudices, there are common features to the prejudices of the hysterical, the obsessional, and the narcissistic characters. (52)

In other words, childism can be broken down into three groups corresponding with the three character types: hysterical, obsessional, and narcissistic childism. These groups contain both abusers and victims – adults and children, respectively.

The different character types correspond to different types of emotional or physical violence the parental figures inflict upon the children of Dahl’s stories. With obsessional childism, for instance, the parental figures crave “order for order’s sake” and are “constantly splitting emotions off from intellectual operations”, and they perceive children “as greedy, spoiled, demanding, undermining; they need to be strictly monitored and punished” (Young-Bruehl 50/51). Narcissistic parental figures raise children who “know that they are not supposed to have any identity or feelings of their own; they have been taken over … by the feelings that their abuser (or abusers) project into [sic] them” (ibid. 247). Hysterical childism, finally, involves parental figures who “seem to be immature and unable to control themselves” (ibid. 239) which ensures the possibility of the child being “pushed into the role of a parent” (ibid. 239). These character types can be found throughout Dahl’s universe in the form of uncaring, emotionally absent parental figures; in the parents of Matilda or the aunts in James and the Giant Peach, for instance. Such physical and emotional actions performed by adults and parental figures are, according to Young-Bruehl, a form of prejudice against children. Following Young-Bruehl’s childism theory, the subtext of Dahl’s fiction shows the incorporation of realism through the attitudes of children towards adults and vice versa through his stories. Indeed, as Valle explains in “The Narrative Voice in Roald Dahl’s Children’s and Adult Books” (2008), in his children’s books his child narrators seem almost adult-like in their ability to freely express their opinion and comment on their current situation (293). Dahl’s adult characters often feed into childism, abusing their charges and their power, making sure to punish the most minor of infractions with a violence not often seen in other works of literature for children.

In contrast and addition to the realism found in Dahl’s work, a reading of his work can be formulated according to another literary genre, namely folklore, to come to a better understanding of the humour and violence that support childism in his books. Note how the

abuse of children is noteworthy not only in Dahl’s texts, but in folk tales by, for instance, the Brothers Grimm as well. These stories were meant as educational tools for teaching morals to children by showing what the consequences are of bad decisions. As such, the Grimms’ first edition of collected folk tales in 1812 features the impregnation of Rapunzel and her being thrown from her tower before the tale was later sanitized (Richter 325), for example. Similarly, Dahl’s work features violence towards children and fantastical elements as well. Culley notes that “to better appreciate Dahl’s place in children’s literature it is necessary to perceive the strength of his work’s link with folklore” (62). In other words, his style should be considered in respect to the established children’s literature before the censorship shift of the early twentieth century. Furthermore, Culley notes that Dahl’s children’s writing

involve[s] exaggerated characters with obvious good-and-evil alignment, a narrator as a sort of companion figure, the prospect of unexpected and the fantastic happening, violence, repeated themes, vivid images, and an ending where the heroine or hero triumphs over the villain. (Culley 62)

Dahl’s texts thus use stereotypical characterisations of fantasy tales to express a relation between the good and bad, child and adult.

The discussion regarding the suitability of Dahl’s work for children seems to overlook the fact that it is clear that Dahl was well aware of the folklore tradition and especially its tendency to entwine the macabre with humour. The author is “quite prepared to have [the children] killed in the most grisly possible way [sic] … as long as there is a whopping great laugh at the same time” (The Marvellous World). Maria Nikolajeva concurs:

Children love disgusting stories … But it must be disgusting in combination with humour. Because extreme violence is not healthy. But Dahl is never violent, not even with naughty children in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. (qtd. in Anderson)

Jackie Stallcup, in her article ““Discomfort and Delight: The Role of Humor in Roald Dahl’s Works for Children” (2012), says that Dahl knows how “humour and disgust can be used conservatively: not only to define acceptable behaviour but also to urge us to adopt it” (31). Dahl crafts stories that use humour and violence while also “featuring conservative, adult-pleasing morals wrapped in subversive tales of powerless youngsters who eventually triumph” (Stallcup 45). As David Rudd argues in his article “‘Don’t gobbelfunk around with words’: Roald Dahl and Language” (2012), by presenting these story aspects with his own vocabulary (made-up words, limericks, and puns), the author fosters a sense of humour between writer and reader (54-55). In this sense, Dahl’s use of nonsense and seemingly offensive language are an indelible part of the meaning of his children’s works. He reaches children at their own psychological level deploying humour and violence in an attempt to explain social concepts and behaviours to his readers they might not necessarily comprehend in normal day-to-day situations. Ultimately, the presence of the psychological elements of childism in Dahl’s works, together with his strong dependence on folklore, create an inversion of standard interactions between children and adults. Reading Dahl as folklore thus helps to demonstrate how stark a contrast there is between Dahl’s child and adult characters by looking at the aspects mentioned by Culley and the humour versus violence ratio. Accordingly, the author’s use of the folklore characteristics support a new portrayal of children and adults. Building on realism, Dahl adds fantastical and unrealistic elements to emphasise and subvert the toxic understanding of childism.

The recognition of the reality of a power imbalance between adult and child is important for literary research, since it is an essentially missing step in current readings of Dahl and thus creates a new way of viewing a variety of adult-child relationships (parent-child, teacher-student, mentor-mentee, etc.) in fiction. By using Young-Bruehl’s thesis of

prejudice against children, a rereading of Dahl’s works will lead to new insights about both childism and the author.

In rereading childism in relation to Dahl’s children’s book, this thesis will focus on the prejudiced relationship between adult and child as described by Young-Bruehl through a thorough analysis of the three categories of childism found in the books’ characters, i.e., obsessional, narcissistic, and hysterical. The first chapter will concentrate on obsessional childism and discusses how it functions within Roald Dahl’s Matilda text from 1988. The second chapter focuses on the narcissistic childism found in Dahl’s Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Lastly, the third chapter will explain hysterical childism in relation to Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach and George's Marvellous Medicine (1981). By discussing and re-evaluating childism in Dahl’s children’s books, this thesis aims to proceed beyond the superficial and trivial criticism that relies heavily on binaries and psychological assumptions. It should be noted, however, that there are no clear-cut lines between the three categories of childism. Consequently, there will inevitably be overlap. Additionally, as shown above, most of the work will rely on Young-Bruehl’s text on childism. Ultimately, this thesis will provide an exploration of the entwinement of realism and folklore in Dahl’s children’s literature as to develop and demonstrate a new understanding of childism. The question to be answered here is how Dahl expresses the three different sorts of childism in his oeuvre and in what way these can help create a new, contemporary method of reading children’s literature.

1. Obsessional Childism in Matilda

1.1. Young-Bruehl on Obsessional Childism

One of the aforementioned three types of childism is obsessional childism, or obsessional eliminative childism. When it comes to the obsessional adult, they are characterized “most saliently by rule-boundedness and love of order” (Young-Bruehl 50). The obsessional adult is “a conformist, constantly splitting emotions off from intellectual operations, and thus presenting a kind of cold rationality or hyperrationality” (ibid. 50). In one of Young-Bruehl’s case studies, she states that obsessional adults “[think] that children hate their parents, that they are ungrateful, neglectful” (ibid. 230). The eliminative part in this type of childism represents the neglect of the parents and their implicit or explicit wish for the child not to exist (Young-Bruehl). Victims of obsessional adults, then, often show signs of depression and consider themselves “burdensome” and “unwanted” (ibid. 231). In this same case study Young-Bruehl mentions that, while the patient was “dedicated … to rescuing others who are being neglected or abused” (ibid. 231) like herself, she “considered herself a self-involved, selfish, even mean person” (ibid. 231). Young-Bruehl explains that “this is a characteristic split in children who have been the victims of an elimination desire and justification” (ibid. 231). The expressions of these traits are present in “children who have been targeted for exclusion from their families or from life generally” (ibid. 238) and they “present themselves as highly anxious and needy, protecting themselves with obsessional defences against the obsessions they felt being turned against them” (ibid. 238). With an awareness of the psychological background of obsessional childism, this chapter will continue with an exploration of Young-Bruehl’s concept in Dahl’s Matilda.

1.2. An Introduction to Obsessional Childism in Matilda

Considering Dahl’s works, obsessional childism is particularly prevalent in Matilda. Throughout Matilda it becomes clear that parents, or adult-figures, are not to be trusted. The narrator, at one point, even states that little children “were inclined to mistrust any creature that was larger than they were” (Dahl, Matilda 98). Furthermore, the adults in Matilda, specifically the Wormwoods – Matilda’s parents – and headmistress Miss Trunchbull, keep proving that children should be cautious around adults who show childist traits in general and obsessional traits specifically. This involves, among other things, an inclination in adults for imposing order on children through seemingly arbitrary rules and systems. In Matilda, Dahl uses the eponymous main character to delve into the life of a child surrounded by obsessional adults. Matilda herself is a perfect example of a child who, as Young-Bruehl writes, appears to be “functionally and emotionally competent” (238). However, close-reading shows that Matilda has suffered great emotional abuse at the hands of the adults in her life. In fact, one critic goes so far as to describe the treatment of Matilda in the story as an example of “child-hatred” (Curtis 176). The sections that follow will provide an analysis of the various types of abuse Matilda has endured during her early childhood.

1.3. Obsessional Childism at Home: The Wormwoods

According to Young-Bruehl, obsessional childism often leads to adults “who [are] unable to feel love or protectiveness for their children” (117). This inability in The Wormwoods’ case becomes clear when the narrator introduces them as the family “who show no interest at all in their children” (Dahl, Matilda 4) and that

the parents looked upon Matilda … as nothing more than a scab. A scab is something you have to put up with until the time comes when you can pick it off and flick it away. Mr and Mrs Wormwood looked forward enormously to the time

when they could pick their little daughter off and flick her away, preferably into the next country or even further than that. (ibid. 4)

The fact that Matilda is compared to a scab, a nuisance people want to get rid of, shows the visibility of the Wormwoods’ lack of love, protectiveness or interest for Matilda. It shows that they wish their daughter did not exist, or at least that she would no longer be a part of their lives. Along the same lines, there is also the obvious neglect of Matilda: the five-year-old is left home alone “[n]early every weekday afternoon” (ibid. 6) and is mostly ignored or put in front of the television when her parents are home. Their wish for Matilda not to exist, together with the obvious neglect they show towards Matilda, represents the primary eliminative part of the obsessional childism manifested in the Wormwoods.

It should not be overlooked that the Wormwoods are not only neglectful of Matilda, but also of her brother Michael. While Mr Wormwood is not verbally aggressive towards his son like he is towards his daughter, Mr Wormwood does keep Michael from developing and/or following his own path. He does so by assuming, and possibly enforcing, that Michael will join the family business. Mr Wormwood does not care about his son’s own wishes, implying that the Wormwoods view their children as what Young-Bruehl calls “useful possessions” (20). Michael’s wants or needs are considered irrelevant or at least inferior to his parents’ wishes, representing a lack of respect towards their son. Dahl created a character who, in this case, is the exact opposite of the Wormwoods in a book that is, according to Curtis, filled with “child-hatred” (166). Looking shortly at The Witches as comparison, it can be seen how the main character’s grandmother “gives her grandson the ultimate form of respect: she asks for his opinions, she listens to his suggestions, she uses his ideas” (qtd. in Curtis 172). Curtis adds that “this is precisely what most adults do not do in their efforts to conceive of what is in the ‘best interests’ of children” (ibid. 172). Thus, with Curtis’ words in

mind, the Wormwoods show their children the ultimate form of disrespect. As Young-Bruehl also states: “[e]xpecting service from one’s child is the essence not of abuse per se but of the childism that justifies abuse: ‘I have a right to the child’s service,’ thinks the parent in an obsessional, a hysterical, or a narcissistic way” (121). In the case of Mr Wormwood the “service” being the assumption that his son will join the family business. This means that obsessionals view their children “as interfering with their own aims and pleasures, as undermining them” (ibid. 117). Michael not joining the family business would be considered an interference by the Wormwoods and the limitations forced upon him support the need of a more in-depth reading of obsessional childism within these characters.

Upon analysing The Wormwoods in more detail, the symptoms of obsessional childism also appear to involve a combination of sexism and childism towards Matilda. Supposedly, Matilda is “too stupid” and too much of “an ignorant little twit” to be able to learn what Mr Wormwood does, but Michael is not (Dahl, Matilda 16). The most obvious difference between Michael and Matilda is their gender: Michael is a boy and will be able to follow in his father’s footsteps, and Matilda is a girl so she cannot, according to her parents. This is a specific example of sexism on the part of Mr Wormwood, giving female readers a recognizable “villain” who makes “bald sexist statements” and showing that Dahl “successfully ridicules this kind of everyday sexism” (Culley 64). Additionally, Mr Wormwood uses the word “little” when he scolds Matilda, implying that being little (or being a child) is equal to being stupid according to him. Even though Michael is also still a child, he is significantly bigger and older than Matilda. Another example of this involves a relatively complicated mathematical question Mr Wormwood poses his son. Mr Wormwood has written down the answer, and asks his son to work out the answer in his head. When Matilda gives the right answer, Mr Wormwood first dismisses her input completely: he does not even consider the possibility that his 5-year-old daughter might have worked out the correct

answer. His immediate assumption of his daughter’s incompetence demonstrates the negative attitude and the always readily available judgment towards his daughter. Matilda, however, encourages her father to check her answer with his note. When Mr Wormwood discovers that she is, in fact, correct, he instantly accuses her of cheating:

“You … you little cheat!” the father suddenly shouted, pointing at her with his finger. “You looked at my bit of paper! You read it off from what I’ve got written here!”

“Daddy, I’m on the other side of the room,” Matilda said. “How could I possibly see it?”

“Don’t give me that rubbish!” the father shouted. “Of course you looked! You must have looked! No one in the world could give the right answer just like that, especially a girl! You’re a little cheat, madam, that’s what you are! A cheat and a liar!” (Dahl, Matilda 49)

Again, Mr Wormwood exhibits sexism and childism, yet more explicitly. Mr Wormwood’s incredulity is not necessarily unexpected, since Matilda clearly exceeds the level of most five-year-olds. However, as the narrator explains in the first chapter, most parents would be thrilled to find out their child has a special gift. Nevertheless, Mr Wormwood is convinced that the calculations in question are practically impossible to work out for anyone “just like that”, let alone for a girl. In his mind, it is impossible that a female child is better at mathematics than he and his son are. According to Young-Bruehl, when a family is “predominantly eliminative … the children are prejudged to be undermining” (228). Mr Wormwood believes that Matilda is undermining him on purpose; he believes that Matilda cheated solely to spite him, though Matilda’s only fault is excelling at mathematics as a female child.

Although his judgements already seem cold-hearted, Mr Wormwood emphasises his gender-based prejudices all the more when encountering Matilda in a bad mood. For example, he punishes Matilda for merely being a curious child who wishes to read: when Mr Wormwood comes home, he turns on the television while Matilda “kept right on reading and for some reason this infuriated the father” (Dahl, Matilda 32). First, Mr Wormwood gets angry with Matilda, but he even decides to act on it:

“I’m fed up with your reading anyway. Go and find yourself something useful to do.” With frightening suddenness he now began ripping the pages out of the book in handfuls and throwing them in the waste-paper basket. Matilda froze in horror. The father kept going. (ibid. 35)

Not only does Mr Wormwood’s reaction seem to be unreasonable, as the narrator states “for some reason”, but he also does not care that his actions are frightening his daughter. In fact, when Matilda objects, he states that she has to save money for a replacement (ibid. 35) as if the incident is her fault entirely. Going back to Young-Bruehl, we know that obsessionals believe that children are “born mean and ungrateful” (230) and are “interfering with [the parents’] aims and pleasures” (ibid. 117). In other words, obsessionals believe that children are inherently malicious and will sabotage the parents on purpose. As a result, regardless of what the child does or what their intentions are, the obsessional parent will assume the action is an attack on them personally and will base their reaction on that assumption. In this case, it appears Mr Wormwood becomes angry for no apparent reason besides an irrational assumption.

However, the narrator does speculate about a reason for Mr Wormwood’s anger: “Perhaps his anger was intensified because he saw her getting pleasure from something that was beyond his reach” (Dahl, Matilda 32-3). The narrator later adds that

[t]here seemed little doubt that the man felt some kind of jealousy. How dare she, he seemed to be saying with each rip of a page, how dare she enjoy reading books when he couldn’t? How dare she? (ibid. 35)

Matilda’s father sees books and the act of reading as subversive. Therefore, in Matilda reading symbolises an act of rebellion and a gateway to a deeper understanding of one’s world. It is also a way of educating oneself beyond mere believes or, in Mr Wormwood’s case, a way of challenging one’s beliefs. For Matilda, books are clearly an escape, as well as a new way of viewing the world and learning new ideas: something her father does not appreciate. While talking about which books Matilda likes and why, Miss Honey – Matilda’s teacher – asks if humour should be included in all children’s books Matilda responds affirmatively and adds that “[c]hildren are not so serious as grown-ups and they love to laugh” (ibid. 75). The close-mindedness her father displays certainly would not appeal to a child as thoughtful and curious as Matilda. The adult system of rigid rules is incapable of dealing with a child's abstract ideas, like humour. Subjective ideas, like what is and is not funny, cannot fit into predefined categories and thus is a threat to a system of adult control.

As a matter of fact, the Wormwoods display obsessional characteristics not only through neglect and verbal violence, but also by actively suppressing Matilda’s uniqueness. For instance, as the narrator is describing why Matilda is such an extraordinary child, he states that

[b]y the age of one and a half [Matilda’s] speech was perfect and she knew as many words as most grown-ups. The parents, instead of applauding her, called her a noisy chatterbox and told her sharply that small girls should be seen and not heard. (ibid. 5)

The narrator indicates that this is indeed a unique accomplishment and that the regular response would be expected to be a positive one. The Wormwoods, however, berated their

daughter for excelling at something. The fact that the Wormwoods believe that “small girls should be seen and not heard” speaks to their philistine and sexist nature. While Mr Wormwood is more prevalent throughout the novel and often more direct in his prejudice towards Matilda, Mrs Wormwood’s contribution to Matilda’s abuse should not be ignored. Mrs Wormwood is not as prevalent in the book, but that suits the image Dahl creates of her, as a mother and as a woman: she should also be seen, not heard. Mrs Wormwood, like her husband, is not only a childist, but also a misogynist in a way. She is convinced that a woman’s only purpose in life is to “look attractive so she can get a good husband” (91). Additionally, as Kristen Guest notes in “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Resistance and Complicity in Matilda” (2018), she “is figuratively entombed by the mass media images she embraces” (247). The only parenting Mrs Wormwood does, is trying to convince Matilda of this, and that “[l]ooks is [sic] more important than books” (Dahl, Matilda 91). The fact that she makes a grammatical error only adds to the portrayal of Mrs Wormwood as a misogynist and a philistine. Only once does the mother does impart a wise lesson on Matilda: “I’m afraid men are not always as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl” (ibid. 59), yet both Mr and Mrs Wormwood undeniably lack any parental instinct – implying an elimination wish.

1.4. Obsessional Childism at School: Miss Trunchbull

In addition to the Wormwood family, there are other adult-figures who can be categorised as obsessional. Matilda, as well as the other children at her school, suffer the wrath of the tyrannical headmistress Miss Trunchbull. For example, Miss Trunchbull swings and throws a girl while holding her by her pigtails, simply because she does not like the sight of them: “You look like a rat with a tail coming out of its head!” (ibid. 108). Another instance involves a boy who was caught stealing Miss Trunchbull’s cake after which he is forced to eat an entire

chocolate cake in front of everyone (ibid. 111-27). However, Miss Trunchbull’s most sadistic punishment is “The Chokey” (ibid. 98); Hortensia, a senior girl, explains that

The Chokey is a very tall but very narrow cupboard. The floor is only ten inches square so you can’t sit down or squat in it. You have to stand. And three of the walls are made of cement with bits of broken glass sticking out all over, so you can’t lean against them. You have to stand more or less at attention all the time when you get locked up in there. It’s terrible. (ibid. 98)

Miss Trunchbull’s punishment of the children can certainly be categorized as cruel and one might assume that most parents would not approve of her methods. However, as mentioned before, throughout Matilda it becomes clear in more than one way that children cannot and should not trust adults and that the children are aware of this. As Hortensia tries to scare Matilda and her friend, Lavender, by sharing her experiences with Miss Trunchbull, the narrator explains that the girls, “[b]eing very small, were inclined to mistrust any creature that was larger than they were, especially senior girls” (ibid. 98). While the truth about The Chokey remains somewhat uncertain, the girls do witness some of Miss Trunchbull’s punishments themselves:

“How can she get away with it?” Lavender said to Matilda … “I know my father would raise a terrific stink if I told him the Headmistress had grabbed me by the hair and slung me over the playground fence.”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Matilda said, “and I’ll tell you why. He simply wouldn’t believe you … And the reason is obvious. Your story would sound too ridiculous to be believed. And that is the Trunchbull’s great secret.” (ibid. 111)

As Stallcup argues: “Dahl creates incongruity through disordering the category of ‘normal adult behaviour’: we simply do not expect adults to say and do the things that Miss Trunchbull says and does” (ibid. 34). Not only do “we”, the readers, not expect Miss

Trunchbull’s behaviour, the children and adults in Matilda do not expect nor believe her actions either. There is a lack of mutual trust between the children and adults in Matilda. On the one hand, the children do not trust the adults due to the way they are treated by them. On the other hand, the adults do not trust the children while there is no apparent reason for this mistrust. An explanation for the latter could be that, to obsessional childists, “children are prejudged to be undermining and burdensome” (Young-Bruehl 228), and are thus not to be trusted.

Furthermore, the Wormwoods and Miss Trunchbull inflict a kind of mental and educational punishment upon Matilda by being completely uninterested in the actual process of educating her as an individual. Miss Honey, as opposed to Miss Trunchbull and the Wormwoods, recognizes that Matilda requires more (or at least a different) education. When she tries to convince Miss Trunchbull and the Wormwoods of Matilda’s special abilities she is discouraged. Responding to Miss Honey’s request to put Matilda in a higher grade, Miss Trunchbull explicitly states that she has “a rule in [the] school that all children remain in their own age groups regardless of ability” (ibid. 82). In other words, Miss Trunchbull believes that all children should be forced to conform to the same system, regardless of their individual differences. In like manner, the Wormwoods are not interested in the education or abilities of their daughter at all. After first assuming Matilda is in trouble when Miss Honey comes to their house, Mr Wormwood deems a television show more important than discussing the future of his daughter’s education and asks her to “come back some other time” (ibid. 88). While Miss Honey struggles to convince the Wormwoods of Matilda’s “brilliant mind” (91), it becomes clear that they are narrow-minded adults who only care about money and looks. One critic correctly describes the adults in Matilda as “philistine[s]” (Cumming 2). As Mrs. Wormwood states, “a girl doesn’t get a man by being brainy” (Dahl, Matilda 93), and Mr Wormwood adds to that by asking “who wants to go to university, for heaven’s sake! All they

learn there is bad habits!” (93). Young-Bruehl states that “the obsessional is a conformist” (50) and that “this type flourishes in families and institutions that promotes order for order’s sake” (ibid. 50). Furthermore, obsessionals, it was found, “lacked any ‘reasonableness and pliability in their thinking and their beliefs’” (ibid. 117). In this case, “order for order’s sake” and the adults’ lack of pliability is shown through the utter failure or unwillingness to treat Matilda as an individual. Despite Matilda’s obvious intelligence, the adults, with exception of Miss Honey, refuse to deviate from the norm; they refuse to work outside of the system.

1.5. Folklore: Matilda’s Powers

Aside from the psychological realism found in Matilda, folklore is unmistakably supporting the tensions created by the obsessional childism. The fantastical is expressed in two different ways. As the narrator explains, Matilda is a lovable girl who “displayed almost no outward signs of her brilliance and she never showed off … All those in her class liked her” (Dahl, Matilda 95). While Matilda herself does not appear to be self-denigrating or self-destructive, as most victims of obsessional parents are, her unhappiness is readily apparent in what separates her from an “ordinary” unhappy child: special, possibly magical, powers. In the first place, she uses her “brainpower” (ibid. 43) to essentially condition her parents:

Her safety-valve, the thing that prevented her from going round the bend, was the fun of devising and dishing out these splendid punishments, and the lovely thing was that they seemed to work, at any rate for short periods. The father in particular became less cocky and unbearable for several days after receiving a dose of Matilda’s magic medicine. (ibid. 43)

These “splendid punishments” involve supergluing her father’s hat to his head (ibid. 24-31), a parrot in a chimney pretending to be a ghost (ibid. 35-42), and replacing her father’s “oil of violets hair tonic” with her mother’s “platinum blonde hair-dye extra strong” (ibid. 50-8). Every time Matilda “[dishes] out” one of her punishments, her father seems to adapt his

behaviour temporarily. Because the Wormwoods pay no attention to their daughter, they are not aware that Matilda is intelligent enough to come up with these pranks so she is never caught. As the narrator states, “[b]eing very small and very young, the only power Matilda had over anyone in her family was brainpower” (ibid. 43): Matilda uses her intelligence to cope with the obsessional adults in her life.

Another way in which she can use her “brainpower” is discovered when she feels “so unbearably angry that something was bound to explode inside her very soon” (ibid. 158): Matilda is telekinetic. The “first miracle” (ibid. 153) occurs when Matilda is angry with Miss Trunchbull for falsely accusing her of slipping a newt in the water jug (ibid. 153-63). Matilda manages to tip over Miss Trunchbull’s glass of water with the newt inside of it using telekinesis (ibid. 158-60). Additionally, Matilda uses her powers to teach Miss Trunchbull a lesson which results in Miss Trunchbull leaving town. Eventually, her powers disappear at the end of the novel. This is after she has been moved to a higher class, but also after she moved in with Miss Honey and left her parents and Miss Trunchbull behind forever. Miss Honey shares her theory on Matilda’s powers with her. She believes that Matilda’s powers are the result of unused potential, leading to “tremendous energy bottled up in there with nowhere to go” (ibid. 223) which Matilda is able to “shoot … through [her] eyes and [makes] objects move” (ibid. 223). Miss Honey claims that, because Matilda is “moved up into the top form” (ibid. 222-3), she now lives up to her full potential meaning she no longer has her powers. Matilda’s telekinetic powers are thus a physical manifestation of her reaction to childism, since she was extremely limited by the adult-figures in her life. In other words, when Matilda discovered and first used her powers, she had been suffering emotional abuse from obsessional adults all her life. Miss Trunchbull falsely accusing her, then, was the final straw and “unleashed” her telekinetic powers. Eventually, the abusive adults have disappeared and thus her powers have as well.

However, the ability to take for herself the role of an adult is Matilda’s ultimate power. She is the one who is capable of freeing herself, all the children at the school, and Miss Honey from Miss Trunchbull’s tyranny. The way in which Matilda describes another child’s “battles” with Miss Trunchbull is enlightening: “It’s like a war” (ibid. 103). This comment speaks to Matilda’s ability to understand that the position of a parent is that of an enemy combatant and that they will seek to destroy her either physically or emotionally. In fact, there are multiple “war” analogies when the children describe confrontational situations between them and adults. For instance, when the senior girl talks about her pranks: “[Hortensia] spoke with the air of an old warrior who has been in so many battles that bravery has become commonplace” (ibid. 100). Later, the narrator adds: “[Matilda and Lavender] gazed in wonder at this goddess, and suddenly even the boil on her nose was no longer a blemish but a badge of courage” (ibid. 102). As Stallcup notes, “Matilda and the other children are locked into an uneven power struggle with the hideous adults around them” (44). Dahl’s solution, then, is having Matilda emerge as a victorious heroine by scaring Miss Trunchbull (the ultimate evil) into leaving town (ibid. 209-22). This victory is a blow against childism and standard adult-child power dynamics as good triumphs evil. What Dahl’s text possibly suggests with Matilda’s victory and her subsequent relationship with Miss Honey is that children should not be oppressed and repressed but that Matilda, and therefore children in general, “needs a sympathetic adult to care for her and for whom she can care in a mutually satisfying and balanced relationship” (Stallcup 44). In short, Dahl’s text shows that childism does not work because it makes the child rebel and the adults will lose their respect and love. Dahl’s text is not arguing to have the child replace or abandon the adult. On the contrary, there should be a mutual loving, nurturing relationship based on respect. Children should still respect adults and listen to them, but that respect is not something adults automatically deserve simply because they are adults; it is something that needs to be earned. Matilda therefore embodies an

anti-childism text dedicated to creating this mutual understanding and respecting relationship between adult and child by having Matilda live with Miss Honey instead of ending up alone.

1.6. Miss Honey

Yet it should not be forgotten that Miss Honey is not necessarily a typical adult. Using psychoanalysis on the characters of a fictional work means treating those characters as non-fictive people. Based on Young-Bruehl’s theory of childism, Miss Honey, as a person, is an unexpected outcome considering the abuse she has suffered at the hands of Miss Trunchbull. As Young-Bruehl explains, children who suffered from obsessional-eliminative parents “usually … appear to be functionally and emotionally competent, but behind that mask they are intensely self-denigrating or actively suicidal” (238). Seeing Miss Honey as an actual person instead of a fictional character, one might expect Miss Honey to have a more unbalanced personality, unlike the stable, loving woman presented to the reader. She is first introduced as being

a mild and quiet person who never raised her voice and was seldom seen to smile, but there is no doubt she possessed that rare gift for being adored by every small child under her care … Some curious warmth that was almost tangible shone out of [her] face when she spoke to a confused and homesick newcomer to the class. (Dahl, Matilda 61)

Dahl represents Miss Honey as a trustworthy, lovable adult to his child audience and her warm personality is evident through her protectiveness and love for the children in her class – especially for Matilda.

Although the only indication of Miss Honey’s lifelong abuse is that she rarely smiles, Miss Honey continues to experience abuse throughout the novel, indicating she is still a child in a way, since she has not reached her top form. It is not until the end of the novel that Miss Honey shares her true story with Matilda and reveals that Miss Trunchbull is her aunt and that

she was her “legal guardian” with “all the powers of a parent” (191) during her childhood. She adds that Miss Trunchbull was a “demon” (ibid. 192) and when Matilda asks what Miss Trunchbull had done to her she replies:

I don’t want to talk about it … It’s too horrible. But in the end I became so frightened of her I used to start shaking when she came into the room. You must understand I was never a strong character like you. I was always shy and retiring. (ibid. 192)

Miss Honey was abused by her aunt until she was well into her adult life: she was forced to pay back her aunt for the costs of her upbringing, made to live on “one pound a week” (ibid. 195) and was rarely allowed to leave the house. Put differently, Miss Trunchbull forces Miss Honey to stay in the position of a child while at the same time destroying her childhood for a second time. In spite of the horrors endured, Miss Honey became a sane and caring woman. As mentioned before, the combination of psychoanalysis and fictional characters can cause some incongruity. However, seeing as Dahl’s work is closely linked to folklore (Culley, Rudd), the story required a fairy godmother character: Miss Honey. With this in mind, Matilda and Miss Honey are remarkably similar as both experienced childism from parental figures and neither of their personalities have been permanently affected in a negative way and this suggests that Matilda fulfils a similar role as the victorious good force.

1.6. Conclusion

As this chapter has shown, Young-Bruehl’s concept of obsessional childism is present in different ways and in varying degrees of intensity throughout Matilda. Using obsessional childism as a lens through which to interpret Matilda clarifies the differences between the protagonists and antagonists and their actions in multiple ways.

Matilda faces obsessional childism at home from her parents and at school from the headmistress Miss Trunchbull and comes to the fore through neglect, verbal violence, sexism,

and emotional abuse. The Wormwoods show a desire for elimination through a lack of interest and love for their daughter, demonstrating the eliminative-obsessional childism present in the novel. Even though Matilda is the protagonist in the novel, the prejudice and abuse is not limited to her alone. The Wormwoods’ other child, Michael, is also a victim of their childism. The childism Michael has to endure, however, is not specific to the obsessional type, but belongs to childism nonetheless. Matilda faces more explicit and direct obsessional childism, mostly by her father. Mr Wormwood thinks very little of his daughter and always assumes the worst. He is convinced Matilda gets herself in trouble and that she lies to him, even though nothing in the novel shows that this conviction is based on any actual evidence or behaviour. In fact, his prejudgement started before Matilda could ever be blamed for anything. In addition to Mr Wormwood’s prejudice towards his daughter, there is also verbal abuse and an instance where he aggressively destroys one of Matilda’s library books. The prejudice and abuse are intensified by the incompatibility between the strikingly different characters/personalities of Matilda and her parents: her parents are obstinate philistines and Matilda is a young, curious intellectual. Furthermore, it has been described how Miss Trunchbull’s physical punishments are perhaps the most explicit expressions of obsessional childism. She counts on the parents’ belief that all children are inherently subversive and have a tendency to be untruthful. Besides physical and emotional punishment, Matilda also suffers from the abusive systems of adult controls and their rules of behaviour. Both Miss Trunchbull and her parents are uninterested in Matilda as an individual and refuse the work outside of the system to provide her with the education or fair treatment she needs. Matilda’s response to all the abuse is clearly the use of her powers, i.e., her “brainpower” and telekinetic powers. The moment her powers disappear when Matilda manages to free herself from the obsessional adults and ends up in a mutually respectful relationship with Miss Honey is her victory over the physical and emotional abuse.

Considering the fact that the characters in Matilda are fictional adds another layer to the use and effects of childism. Miss Honey has had to deal with more intense childism for a longer time than Matilda, which would, according to psychology, lead to a highly unstable, possibly depressed person. Miss Honey, however, is not an unstable character, because Dahl’s work is closely linked to folklore and thus requires a kind of fairy godmother character and happy ending for the good characters. Ultimately, folklore is used to aid in fighting childism.

The elements of obsessional childism Dahl used in Matilda are pivotal to the story and the development of the characters. Dahl has created a tale of anti-childism with Matilda and has helped identify and define a prejudiced relationship between adult and child whilst simultaneously offering a solution to the toxic use of childism.

2. Narcissistic Childism in Charlie and The Chocolate

Factory

2.1. Young-Bruehl on Narcissistic Childism

The narcissistic personality trait is defined by its extreme focus on the self. As Young-Bruehl states: “[t]he key common characteristic [of unhealthy narcissism] is self-absorption so strong that the narcissist is unable to relate to others or, especially, to empathize with others” (245). The lack of empathy or the inability to see another’s point of view is detrimental to a parental or authority figure. Narcissists “radiate the expectation that they be privileged, lucky, indulged, or taken care of when they are hurt – often by children” (ibid. 51-52). Additionally, Young-Bruehl indicates that there are two types of unhealthy narcissism present in the larger narcissistic personality. The first, referred to as grandiose narcissism, is probably the best-known type of narcissism. The manifestation of grandiose narcissism “characterizes self-promoters, presenting themselves to the world as a powerful, commanding figure” (ibid. 245). Parents and authority figures easily fit into this category as they have authority over those who are younger and without societal/familial/political/economic power; in other words, children. If the grandiose narcissist is challenged they will make “direct attacks on people’s selves” in order to put down this attempt at rebelling against authority (ibid. 245). The second main manifestation of the narcissistic personality type is the depleted narcissist. This person is “passive-aggressive” (ibid. 245), often seeking pity or empathy from others; they portray themselves as victims and without power with the hopes that those falling for their ruse will help them to regain the supposed loss of power (ibid. 245). Put differently, narcissists are “either ‘the best’ physically or mentally or the best at being bitterly wounded” (ibid. 51). Young-Bruehl adds that “both unhealthy types suffer from some kind of ‘narcissistic wound’

or a cluster of wounds that are central to their preoccupation which they use to justify their self-righteousness” (ibid. 245): they use past abuse to legitimize the abuse they inflict on others. Narcissists do not, or are unable to, care about others, but do require the maximum amount of attention and care from others. This means that the focus of the narcissist will be solely upon themselves, leading to the neglect of not only their spouses and significant others but also children.

In addition to craving full attention, most narcissists require having the ultimate authority in the family, work, or social environment. In effect, the narcissistic adult becomes a sort of familial dictator, the ultimate arbiter of family life via whom all choices are made. Young-Bruehl explains that the “[n]arcissistic family regimes come in many varieties” (ibid. 245), meaning that one parent can dominate both their spouse and their children or both parents dominate their children, either separately, “battling each other,” (ibid. 245) or working together. Young-Bruehl observes that “the family members are required to enhance the narcissist’s standing the world; they are … the ‘trophy children’ who bring home praise and glory” (ibid. 246). Yet if the child’s abilities or accomplishments surpass the narcissist’s, this would result in “jealousy and blame” (ibid. 246) towards the child. The opposite, then, would be the need for the child to blunder, causing the narcissist to feel “enhanced by being so much better than the child or by grandiosely assuming the burden of the child’s failure” (ibid. 246). In the end, whether the child excels or fails, they will never triumph.

The purpose of the denigrating attitude towards children is for the narcissist to erase the child’s self, also called “identity erasure” (ibid. 144). As Young-Bruehl notes, “in narcissistic childism, children are blank pieces of paper on which an adult’s story is written” (ibid. 247). Young-Bruehl further observes that narcissistic childism is a “form of prejudice … many children experience: they discover that to their parents they are all about their parents” (ibid. 31). She adds that “[e]ven though the children are in the family, they are

granted no identity of their own: they are considered their [parents’] possessions” (ibid. 31). The battle of resistance to erasure is often the focal point of parent-child conflict when dealing with narcissistic childism. While children “quickly learn the power setup … they also learn that resistance to self-erasure is a dreadfully difficult matter, as the self that might resist is exactly the self that is being erased” (245). Young-Bruehl explains that the narcissist’s “sense of self or self-esteem requires them to dominate or erase another’s self – often the self of a child over whom they claim ownership and complete authority” (ibid. 52). Here, the narcissistic adult needs to be built up through the use of the child who is “required to house self-doubt so that the narcissist can go forward without hesitation” (ibid. 247). Another child can be assigned with the task of “having emotions that the narcissist cannot have or does not want to show because they would not reflect well on him or her” (ibid. 247). The adults “justify their behavior by their narcissistic childism, their belief that their children [exist] to serve their needs” (ibid. 116). As an illustration, Young-Bruehl provides the reader with some concrete example sentences that a narcissistic childist might say: “‘Children are supposed to continue our glory into the future, but they are ungrateful and rebellious, so they must be punished,’ or ‘Kids today are so much less good than we were as kids’” (ibid. 54). These sentences show how the narcissistic adult emphasises their own superiority at the cost and devaluation of (their own) children.

As has been noted, children who are raised by narcissistic childists are subjected to “identity erasure” at the hands of their parents: they “know that they are not supposed to have any identity or feelings of their own; they have been taken over, like an occupied or colonized country, by the feelings that their abuser (or abusers) project into [sic] them” (ibid. 247). Young-Bruehl uses three case studies to explore narcissistic childism further (ibid. 248-257). The first shows that being abused to the point where the child loses their self leads to the conviction that they “deserve the attack … [and that] they did not serve well, and thus were,

by definition, rebellious” (ibid. 249). Young-Bruehl adds that “[t]he childist prejudice they experienced and then turned against themselves is the belief that children are inadequate to their job, they always fail the tests set for them” (ibid. 249). The second case study reveals a different form of narcissistic childism: “narcissism of the mental health profession” (ibid. 254). Young-Bruehl explains that “[t]his childism sees children who do not do what narcissistic adults say they should do as a mental health problem” (ibid. 254). The third and final case study “is an excellent illustration of why corporal punishment is so often a manifestation of narcissistic childism, and of how narcissistic childists justify corporal punishment” (ibid. 255). From the child’s perspective, corporal punishment is an indication that the child “[can] never do anything right” (ibid. 255). In turn, the narcissistic parents justify their behaviour on the grounds of “their belief that their children exist to serve their needs” (ibid. 116). Their “needs” being “compensation for the damage they feel has been done to them unfairly, either by particular persons or by circumstances” (ibid. 246). In this case, for instance, this meant that the child’s parents “did not want their daughter to outgrow them” (ibid. 256). Young-Bruehl adds that “[the child’s] father had literally beaten her down whenever she showed any sign of independence, any behavior that wasn’t at his command” (ibid. 256).

2.2. An Introduction to Narcissistic Childism in Charlie and The Chocolate

Factory

Dahl’s works display characters with narcissistic traits to demonstrate that, despite their seeming authority, adults are often lacking in moral wisdom and are often self-absorbed. Dahl usually has characters such as authority figures (Matilda) or parental figures (James and the Giant Peach) or those with revered social status (Charlie and The Chocolate Factory) act as his narcissistic foils for his child heroes, because their vanity is easy to spot and call out as incorrect behaviour for the child reader. The narcissistic childist can take many forms in both

the real world and the world of literature. Indeed, oftentimes the seeming saviour in adult form can turn out to be nothing but a narcissist seeking children to use as a blank slate or to use as a vessel for self-doubt or personal failings. Adults in literature (as in the real world) can manipulate children for their own selfish goals and gains while remaining unconcerned with the repercussions or physical and psychological damage they may cause in the children.

2.3. The Children

Charlie, his parents, and grandparents all seem to have no childist traits at all: they do not show an elimination wish nor a desire to erase their son’s identity, nor do they push him into an adult role (obsessional, narcissistic, and hysterical childism, respectively). It is clear that, from the five children who found a golden ticket, Charlie is the only well-behaved child. Similarly, his Grandpa Joe is the only well-behaved adult among the group of parents being shown around the chocolate factory. As Bosmajian claims in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Other Excremental Visions” (1985) about this similarity: “[g]reed and aggression characterize the children and their adult companions; only Charlie and his grandfather have learned restraint through the necessities of poverty” (37). This can also be seen, for instance, the time Charlie finds a coin on the ground when he and his family are literally starving. Before he picks up the coin, he hesitates whether he can actually claim it as his own: “Quickly he looked around him. Had somebody just dropped it? … [Nobody] was searching for any money … Then was it his, this fifty pence? Could he have it?” (Dahl, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory 59). His hesitation to take the coin shows Charlie’s moral correctness and selflessness. Additionally, Charlie shows compassion for people who may or may not deserve it: one of the other children, Violet Beauregarde, gets herself into trouble after being warned multiple times. Charlie, however, is still concerned for her safety: “will Violet Beauregarde ever be alright again or will she always be a blueberry?” (ibid. 130). Dahl’s text demonstrates that without the influence of childism a child can show altruism and empathy and be a

conscientious person. With this in mind, Charlie, “the hero” (ibid. 9), is the antithesis of the other four children, their parents, and Mr Wonka.

However, the loving upbringing Charlie experienced is highly likely different from that of the other four children in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Both the children and their parents are all demanding of attention and put their own needs before anyone else’s. Essentially, with the exception of the Bucket family, all the parents are narcissistic childists and their children are victims of narcissistic childism. It is hard to determine to what extent the parents of the other children are in fact narcissistic childists due to the lack of discourse and background information on the families. It is possible, however, to deduce their narcissistic nature from their children’s behaviour based on Young-Bruehl’s findings. People who were raised by narcissistic childists or grew up in a narcissistic environment considered a demanding relationship an acceptable way of dealing with children. Once they start their own family, they “[expect] their own children to take care of them, to admire them unquestioningly, to serve their own forms of learned narcissism” (152). In other words, the behaviour and mannerisms of the four children reflect those of their parents and this insight allows for an analysis of the four families as narcissistic childists through the children.

The first narcissistic child addressed here is Augustus Gloop. When the group is shown into “The Chocolate Room” (Dahl, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory 87), Augustus is suddenly spotted at the bank of the chocolate river, “scooping hot melted chocolate into his mouth as fast as he could” (ibid. 96). Even though he is told to stop multiple times by both his mother and Mr Wonka, he keeps eating the chocolate. As the narrator explains: “Augustus was deaf to everything except the call of his enormous stomach” (ibid. 97); Augustus does not care that Mr Wonka needs his chocolate to remain “untouched by human hands” (ibid. 97) nor does he care about his mother’s warnings. Augustus’s selfishness, however, results in him falling into the river and being sucked into a large pipe (ibid. 99-100). Mr Gloop is

encouraged to rescue him by Mrs Gloop, but his first reaction is “Good heavens, woman … I’m not diving in there! I’ve got my best suit on!” (ibid. 98). It goes without saying that Mr Gloop is clearly an example of narcissistic behaviour by putting his own interests (his suit) before the safety of his own son. In a similar manner, while Mrs Gloop does seem concerned about her son by telling both her husband and Mr Wonka to save him, she does not attempt save him herself. Again, the interests of the parent are put before the safety of the child. The narcissistic childism is visible by the way the parents always prioritise themselves above others – including their own children – and their children, naturally, copy this behaviour, making them narcissists as well.

Comparatively, the second child to fall victim to their own self-serving behaviour is Violet Beauregarde. When the group is in “The Inventing Room” (ibid. 113), Mr Wonka shows them “The Great Gum Machine” (ibid. 118). Mr Wonka uses this machine to invent gum that is “a whole three-course dinner all by itself” (ibid. 121). Violet, being “the silly gum-chewing girl” (ibid. 119), is inevitably drawn to Mr Wonka’s latest candy invention. She is told multiple times not to eat the gum but she is blinded by her selfish “need” to try it and ends up like the dessert of the three-course meal: a blueberry (ibid. 123-124). During this event, Mr Beauregarde shows narcissistic childism towards his daughter by saying: “Keep chewing, baby! … Keep right on chewing! This is a great day for the Beauregardes! Our little girl is the first person in the world to have a chewing-gum meal!” (ibid. 123). Due to the fact that Mr Beauregarde regards his daughter’s actions as an accomplishment for all who carry his name, he makes Violet the “trophy child” (Young-Bruehl 246). Violet being the first person to try Mr Wonka’s revolutionary gum would “bring home praise and glory” (ibid. 246) resulting in an “[enhanced] standing in the world” (ibid. 246) for her narcissistic parents. The Beauregardes’ pride and delight soon fades when their daughter starts to swell and turn blue:

“I don’t want a blueberry for a daughter!” (Dahl, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory 126). After all, a child resembling a blueberry is highly unlikely to “bring home praise and glory”.

Veruca Salt is the third child to be subdued by her own greed and selfishness. After “The Inventing Room”, Mr Wonka leads the group to “The Nut Room” (ibid. 139) where trained squirrels are sorting and cracking nuts. Veruca, “a girl who is spoiled by her parents” (ibid. 9), decides she wants one of Mr Wonka’s squirrels for herself. Unlike Augustus’ and Violet’s parents, the Salts do not even attempt to stop their daughter from doing what she was explicitly told not to do. Mrs Salt does point out that the squirrels belong to Mr Wonka, but Veruca “[does not] care about that” (ibid. 141). It becomes clear that Veruca does not respect nor care about other people or their possessions; if she wants something, she needs to have it regardless of the consequences. Mr Salt immediately gives in to his daughter’s wish and tries to solve the problem the only way he knows: money (ibid. 141). Mrs Salt’s defective attempt to try to change her daughter’s mind and Mr Salt’s immediate concession show that the Salts are unable and unwilling to control their child. The parents’ inability reflects their own behaviour: they taught Veruca to put herself first by always putting themselves first.

Furthermore, both Veruca and the fourth child, Mike Teavee, “[a] boy who does nothing but watch television” (ibid. 9), show signs of aggression and anger. Due to her spoiled upbringing, Veruca throws a tantrum until she gets what she wants when her desires are not immediately satisfied. Take, for example, the fact that Mr Salt orders all the employees at his factory to unwrap chocolate bars to find a golden ticket for his daughter. When three days go by without result, “[his] little Veruca got more and more upset each day, and every time [he] went home she would scream at [him] … [a]nd she would lie for hours on the floor, kicking and yelling in the most disturbing way” (ibid. 40). In contrast, Mike’s anger shows when his violent film is interrupted by reporters questioning him about finding a golden ticket: