Narrative Techniques In The Bastable Trilogy

Edith Nesbit(1858-1924)was a British children's author.She is considered the "first modern writer for children".Nesbit is famous for her ability to convey a sense of childhood.Standing squarely between Victorian and New era,her books for children present more modern views of childhood than traditional ones.Her child characters are released from the restrictions imposed on them by Victorian society.They are free,autonomous and innovative.Most researches from scholars at home and abroad focus on Nesbit's fantasy novels.In contrast,her realistic children's novels haven't received enough attention.Her acute sense of childhood and deep concern for children are well displayed in her realistic family adventure stories:The Bastable Trilogy,including The Story of the Treasure Seekers(1899),The Wouldbegoods(1901)and The New Treasure Seekers(1904),of which her narrative style is distinct and innovative.Through the examination of the narrative techniques employed in the Bastable Trilogy,her social critiques and modern views of childhood and children are explored.Nesbit employs a distinctive voice of a child-narrator to permit childhood to have expression.She creates a space for herself in which to vocalize her positions on the role and value of children and childhood in society.Nesbit's unique narrative techniques set her apart from her contemporaries,and enabled her to break free from the constraints of Victorian society.Yet to date,none of scholars have done comprehensive analysis of her Bastable Trilogy from this narrative view.This thesis includes five chapters.The introduction was the brief background of Nesbit and her Bastable Trilogy,the literature review on this novel,related theories and the structure of this thesis.Chapter Two discusses the question of who is speaking,speaking to whom and the relationship between the two by analyzing the techniques of child's narrative voice,crosswriting,implied identity and intrusive narrator.It can be indicated that the role of children including child readers is taken onto the real focus in Nesbit's narrative.Though the crosswriting technique indicates a double addressee including child and adult,it serves to highlight the innocence of children while presenting the conflicts between child's and adult's world.Chapter Three mainly investigates into the children's imaginative world through the examination of the intertextual narration.Through allusion to other texts,Nesbit presents her positions on certain texts for children and emphasizes the interactions between children and literature.Chapter Four takes an exploration of other narrative techniques from the aspect of language and structure in the Trilogy by examining humor and episodic plot in combination with certain cognitive analyses.The employment of humorous techniques of language play and episodic plot demonstrate the importance of child readers in Nesbit's writing.Chapter Five draws conclusion on the thesis.The study gives complement to the previous researches on Nesbit's children's books.By employing both narrative theories and descriptive content analysis of E.Nesbit's Bastable Trilogy,the study sought to show Nesbit's great contribution to the development of children's literature.It also sheds light upon education of children and the way adults interact with their children in today's society.