The Water Babies

Charles Kingsly

Much like in Peter Pan, the narrator of The Water Babies has moments where he (and I use this pronoun deliberately) inserts his voice into the story to talk at the reader. Such as the moment when he asks us “A water baby? You never heard of a water baby? Perhaps not. This is the very reason why the story was written” (50). As in Peter Pan, I find this voice disturbing and predatory and feel that it removes agency for the child reader. Because examining the agency both of the child characters and the child readers, is an important focus of my pedagogical approach to children’s literature, I see these moments of narrator talking at the reader as wonderful examples of ways to spark a conversation about how the narrator and narration of a novel can affect the agency not only of the characters within the story, but also of the readers.

I would also ask my students to explore the effect that the narrator’s assumption of a [white] male reader has upon them either as part of the intended audience or as apart from the intended audience.  Can the maleness of the narrator and supposed narratee be read by, past, and through by modern audiences?  (sml)