This book analyzes ten books in which children feature as critical characters and assesses the ways the children in these novels have been used to explore and evade large social, psychological and moral problems. The novels the book explores portray children so vividly that their names are instantly recognizable. The book traces the 130-year evolution of these iconic child characters, moving from Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Pip in Great Expectations to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; from Miles and Flora in The Turn of the Screw to Peter Pan and his modern American descendant, Holden ... More

This book analyzes ten books in which children feature as critical characters and assesses the ways the children in these novels have been used to explore and evade large social, psychological and moral problems. The novels the book explores portray children so vividly that their names are instantly recognizable. The book traces the 130-year evolution of these iconic child characters, moving from Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Pip in Great Expectations to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn; from Miles and Flora in The Turn of the Screw to Peter Pan and his modern American descendant, Holden Caulfield; and finally to Lolita and Alexander Portnoy. The book highlights the fact that many classic English and American novels focus on children and adolescents not as colorful minor characters but as the intense center of attention. It shows that, despite many differences of style, setting, and structure, all these novels enlist a particular child's story as part of a larger cultural narrative. The book demonstrates the way these great novels work, how they spring to life from their details and how they both invite and resist interpretation and provoke rereading. It conveys the variety and continued vitality of these books as they shift from Victorian moral allegory to New York comic psychoanalytic monologue, from a child who is an agent of redemption to one who is a narcissistic prisoner of guilt and proud rage.