Tom, Dick and Harry at school: the construction and representation of boyhood in selected children's literature

Abstract

This study explores constructions and representations of boyhood in selected historical and recent boys’ school stories through the discourses they represent, propagate and, at times, subvert. Foucault’s views on discourse form the basis of the theoretical approach adopted in this study. A literature review on the ideas distinguishing Foucault’s perceptions of discourse from those of other theorists is therefore included. Raymond Williams’s differentiation between dominant, emergent and residual discourses is also demonstrated to be helpful in understanding and describing the relationships between discourses. The principles of critical discourse analysis, in particular, facilitated the discussion of dominant and alternative discourses in the context of the fictional school. A comparison of the dominant discourses implicit in historical and recent publications makes it possible to assess ways in which fictional constructions of boyhood have changed or remained the same over time. The acknowledged benchmark of traditional boys’ school stories, Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857), and selected school stories by authors such as Talbot Baines Reed, John Finnemore, Rudyard Kipling, Harold Avery and Frank Richards show that the effect of dominant discourses on the representation of the protagonists in historical texts of this kind generally culminate in a replication of an archetypal ideal British schoolboy. This type of boy is constructed as being characterised by his admirable physical and moral courage, outstanding athletic prowess, honesty and strict, though cheerful, adherence to a rigid code of honour that scorns backing down from a fight, discourages the outward display of emotions and rejects any form of snitching. A range of additional related texts confirms this tradition and archetype, albeit often in a more critical portrayal of the British school system of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The contemporary works selected for detailed discussion are texts published after 1990 which arguably fall within the ambit of boys’ school stories. The focus falls on the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) by J.K. Rowling, The War of Jenkins’ Ear (1993) by Michael Morpurgo, and John van de Ruit’s debut novel, Spud: A Wickedly Funny Novel (2005) and its sequel, Spud – The Madness Continues (2007). The findings show that although the recent boys’ school stories by Rowling, Morpurgo and Van de Ruit frequently include motifs and formulaic elements which are typical of traditional boys’ school stories within the texts (notably the motifs of corporal punishment, the fagging system, honesty, courage and the importance of sporting matches), they do not adhere strictly to the underlying discursive framework implicit in their historical counterparts. Thus, the study suggests that the discursive predictability apparent in traditional boys’ school stories is no longer present in contemporary examples of this genre. Instead, the findings of this study indicate that contemporary constructions of boyhood in the context of school are to some extent liberated from the dictates of convention, and that they have become essentially indeterminate and variable.