Toy Stories: Analyzing the Child in Nineteenth-Century Literature by Vanessa Smith (review)

作者：Yuanyuan Zhang, Haifeng Hui · 发表于：The Modern Language Review · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1353/mlr.2024.a923557 · 研究领域：Themes in Literature Analysis、Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies、American and British Literature Analysis

Reviewed by: Toy Stories: Analyzing the Child in Nineteenth-Century Literature by Vanessa Smith Yuanyuan Zhang and Haifeng Hui Toy Stories: Analyzing the Child in Nineteenth-Century Literature. By Vanessa Smith. New York: Fordham University Press. 2023. xiii+240 pp. $105 (ebk $29.99). ISBN 978–1–531503–57–4 (ebk 978–1–531503–59–8). That Victorian literature exalted the innocent and blissful child is a critical consensus. But in her new monograph, Vanessa Smith examines figures of the anxious and aggressive child in what she terms 'toy stories', in which child characters engage in destructive behaviours towards objects. Furthermore, Smith suggests that these narratives showcase proto-psychoanalytical intuitions and provide preparatory contexts for modern child analysis as subsequently advanced by theorists such as Melanie Klein and Anna Freud. The monograph is comprised of a Preface, an Introduction, four chapters, and a Conclusion. In the Preface, the author highlights the presence of toy-breaking stories in Victorian literature by referencing excerpts from Maria Edgeworth and George Eliot, among other authors, and effectively brings up the book's central tenet that nineteenth-century fiction 'adumbrated' (p. x) modern psychoanalysis. [End Page 245] The Introduction offers an overview of Klein's life and her major contributions to child psychology. These include object relations theory—which emphasizes the importance of childhood experiences with things—and play therapy, a te...