Notes on "The Water Babies" (1862)

[x_los]

- What the fuck was that? I'm not even new to the weird world of Victorian kidlit, and still: what just happened?

- There is SO MUCH child mortality in this book; it's not just the lynchpin of the plot, enabling Tom's conversion from chimney sweep to water baby, it's then additionally thrown in every few chapters at random. Meet a baby? WELL NOT FOR LONG! "Der Struwwelpeter" (1845) gets name-checked multiple times, but that collection's blithe viciousness seeps right through the whole of this text. The difference in vibe between this employment of the supernatural for a morality tale and Dickens' earlier use in the Christmas Books that very likely inspired this is profound. "Water Babies" is simultaneously more Christian and, despite frequently attaining to real sentiment, nastier. That's not to say that even mature Dickens doesn't have a degree of narrative cruelty, but the grittiness of "Water Babies", mixed with its sugary quality, strikes me as more jarring.

- The politics are such a wild melange. 'I wish missionaries converted everyone!' mixed with some class consciousness, which is then itself commingled with deep complacency about class. It's bad to abuse child-labourers, but also this notorious slaver is a bit of a jolly fellow. And now it's time for racialised panic about indolent tropical people devolving into monkeys! We then cut to an interlude about how amazing imperialism and eco-devastation are. Over-fish! That! Shoal!! Hey--you'd kill a white girl if she dated a black guy, right? Ahah of course you would, just checking, just checking. (This conveyed via the metaphor of fish.)

This book is extremely self-contented in its ideas and didactic, but the actual position it's staking out is all over the place.

- Similarly, this is one of the most extreme examples of the Victorian obsessions with taxonomy, systematisation and carceral justice (concepts which are not unrelated). We hear so much about punishment, it's like Dante's "Inferno" in a tide pool. At the same time, this wildly incoherent book loses track of its own expansive cosmology. This gets especially fraught with the book's many, many depictions of sentient predator-prey relationships. The book might say that all this isn't supposed to be taken seriously--mate, you dwelt on these mechanics and this proselytising for 80% of the text. They don't sell lampshades big enough. 

- So the water babies grow into adults at the end? Or they're reborn? And Tom grows up to be a scientist who invents, among other things, railroads (presumably for India, etc.) and guns? That's--that's all okay, by this moral system? Somehow?

- For all this (all this!!), this book is often engagingly-written, chummily intimate and well-described. One thing that unnerves me, though, is how much the book relies on appeals to you, the reader, which draw you into its in-group. The book's position is so scattershot that anyone's bound to fall afoul of cosy agreement with it, whereupon they can, I suppose, go to one of the book's many lavishly-described hells. 

- I need to stress to you that somehow, this book was really popular; it was like, a hard-core classic. I was absolutely aware of it as a youth, even if I didn't read it (because I'd been told it was racist--which it is, but not in quite the blatant, thorough-going way you'd expect: just very intensely on a few occasions).

- Is this conflation of the faeries with high-key Christian divine mother shit out of Spenser? Is this... Faerie Queene again?

Comments

[lunarriviera]

i have never read this and now i know why (although perversely now i kind of want to)

[x_los]

One thing is, it worked very well early on when it was pretty mundane and focused on the chimney sweep protagonist's trip out to this house and his escape over a mountain. I was very engaged with that story. But the more billowy and ambitious the story got, the less it actually had to say. The more freedom to just wax on and the less narrative constraint it had, the more the actual story slackened and withered.

[pallas_rose]

Yikes on yikes. Never heard of it and will actively avoid. Sounds malignant in multiple ways.

However, was exposed to Der Struwwelpeter at an early age; my great-aunt sold it in her children's clothes and toys shop. Even the cover illustration (those nails!) haunts me.

[x_los]

The play did me in (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockheaded_Peter_(musical)), the V&A has a recording. Intense stuff.

[pallas_rose]

My day job has ruined me for anything intense in this way, which I sometimes regret, but there's no helping it. I suspected this from my reading habits changing (more fic, more romance, less literary work, lots and lots of rereading old favorites) during training, but confirmed it when a close friend (also a surgeon) took me to see 1984 on Broadway in 2017. It had multiple on-stage scenes of torture; they pulled out teeth and had fake blood drip about in a pretty realistic manner. We were rigid and clinging to each other the whole time. I think we would have walked out (not because it was bad! for ourselves!) if we hadn't been in the precarious eaves and probably would have killed ourselves or others falling if we'd tried in the dark.

Horror used to be my favorite film genre, but now can only watch after being spoiled and having vetted the work extensively, and still only if there's a reason to watch other than "it's good!". And so: I will trust your analysis of the play, and probably not verify it.

[solo]

I think someone told me once Water Babies was meant to be satire? I wouldn't know, I never read it, not being a fan of Victorian literature. Sounds awful though.

I was brought up with Struwwelpeter; still know some of it by heart and I'm almost 60. Didn't stop me sucking my thumb until I was well into my teens, and you'd often find me going out on windy days with an umbrella in hopes of some adventure! I think kids just... take from that stuff what they want.

[x_los]

So a *bit* of it is satire related to Darwinism, and that element is fine, but it then ranges over like--80 topics it wants to deliver confusing and not very unified opinions on, just a buffet of Takes, &I'm a bit 'who is this for, do kids vibe with your proto-twitter, sir?'

[sunshine304]

Never heard of this book before and have no desire to read it now! XD

I had Der Struwwelpeter of course and I still remember some of the stories as the pictures were quite, uuhm, expressive… I especially hated the story with that kid that killed a cat, HATED it! But for a certain age group, this was a mandatory children’s book, I guess.

Now I looked it up and it’s still sold just like that, same illustrations and everything. Okay then. Let’s haunt another generation of children, I guess. XD

[x_los]

Yeah I saw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockheaded_Peter_(musical) in the V&A theatrical archive collection and oh my god it's a Lot.

[sunshine304]

Oh yes I dimly remember that this exists.. (*/ω＼*)

[harinezumiko]

I never read the book, but the animated film was part of my childhood. Can still remember the songs.

Was thinking about these "classics" the other day when someone mentioned Daddy Long Legs. That prompted a bit of reading, including on Water Babies. The things you miss in childhood...

[x_los]

Huuuh, I don't think the daddy long legs shows up in the book.

[harinezumiko]

Daddy Long Legs was another book, about an orphan and her mysterious benefactor. But reading up on that took me down the warren of old books. Sorry for the confusion!

[x_los]

Oooh, I see, cool.