There is a reoccurring theme found in these children's stories and it brings up the question, "When did main characters in children's literature become such brats?" Eloise is a spoiled brat that terrorizes the hotel she stays at. There is no parental influence, or even one present. She is raised by her nanny, the same way Harriet was raised by Ole Golly. Eloise even makes similar observations about the people around her like Harriet did. Eloise admits to lying, but unlike Harriet, her nanny doesn't advise her to. It was interesting that Eloise charged everything to the room. This might have something to do with the time period it was written, which was about the time major credit use first appeared in culture. I was honestly surprised that Eloise was never kicked out of the hotel.
Max in Where the Wild Things Are is also a brat. He is punished and pouts, but he also uses his imagination in a way Eloise did not. He travels to far away lands. There he ends up punishing the wild things the same way his mother punished them. It's interesting the way he sends the wild things to bed with no dinner. He sees nothing wrong with the things he was doing at his house. To him there was nothing wrong with torturing the dog, nailing things to the wall, and being "wild."
There appears to be some kind of commotion, or disruption, in all the stories. In The Cat in the Hat the children are bored exactly how Eloise was bored in the hotel. Instead of being trouble makers themselves they have help from the Cat in the Hat. The Cat, Eloise, Thing 1, and Thing 2 are very similar. They do not see their actions as wrong and they destroy everything around them. The parents are also absent in The Cat in the Hat. An interesting comparison found is that the Cat repeats everything in sets of three just as Eloise's nanny does. The only difference is that the fish is an acting role model for the children dealing with The Cat in the Hat.
I like your assessment of these bratty kids. I started to think of it as the adult mind making sense of how children act. Of course we were all kids once, but as a kid you may not really be aware of your brattiness (not a word). So, I like to look at these characters as projections of the adult mind rationalizing behavior. Many of us hold on to a bit of our childlike nature. And for fiction writers it is almost impossible to function without a bit of that imaginative, childlike mind.
ReplyDeleteI also saw many similarities between Eloise and Harriet. The absence of the parents is also an interesting issue that seems to be reoccurring in all of these books, as well as with Harriet the Spy. There is no doubt that the children depicted in these books are "brats," but I really like Scott's comment on this possibly being "the adult mind making sense of how children act." It's an interesting way to look at it. I think sometimes we forget that these books are written by adults portraying what they think childhood is.
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