Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Culture

by James R. Kincaid

The question ``What is a child?'' is at the heart of the world the Victorians made. Throughout the nineteenth century, there developed an image of the child as a symbol of purity, innocence, asexuality--the angelic child perhaps not wholly real. Yet at the same time, the child could be a figure of fantasy, obsession, and surpressed desires, as in the case of Lewis Carroll's Alice (or later, James Barrie's Peter Pan). This image of the child as both pure and strangely erotic is part of the mythology of Victorian culture. Now available in paper, Child Loving traces for the first time the growth of the Victorian--and modern--conceptions of the body, the child, sexuality, and the stories we tell about them. Dealing with one of the most intimate and troubling notions of the modern period--how the Victorians (and we, their descendents) imagine children within the continuum of human sexuality--this work compels us to reconsider just how we love the children we love.

Genres: Sexuality, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, History

416 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 1992

About the author

James R. Kincaid is an English Professor masquerading as an author (or the other way around). He’s published two novels (Lost and A History of the African-American People by Strom Thurmond — with Percival Everett). He is also the author of a couple dozen short stories, and ever so many nonfiction articles, reviews, and books, including long studies of Dickens, Trollope, and Tennyson, along with two books on Victorian and modern eroticizing of children: Child-Loving and Erotic Innocence. Kincaid has taught at Ohio State, Colorado, Berkeley, USC, and is now at Pitt.

Reviews

[Thomas Brassington · Rating 2 out of 5]

The general argument really needs re-working if it still wants to be relevant to literary readings of the relationship between children and paedophiles. It's interesting, but ultimately reads like Derrida if Derrida was worse and a bit too into kids. Kincaid, more than once, sounds like an academic who's trying to rationalise his own low-level paedophilia with the tools the academy has given him. The text constantly says 'the thrill of the chase' in one way or another in relation to adults in general and the child. The dual figurisation of the child as simultaneously real and not real (true and false) honestly just sounds a bit dumb: again, derrida if derrida was worse. And favouring the notion of a paedophilic society in general without actually discussing the paedophile as a figure who exists within our culture feels like a very missed area of discussion for Kincaid's text. And more often than not I felt like Kincaid was getting lost in his own argument, going round in circles, shifting topic midway through a paragraph. I wonder what a second edition would be like though, and this will hopefully prove a useful text for my dissertation

[Karl Andersson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The prequel to Erotic Innocence delivers the same convincing argument about how we’re caught in a culture of saints and villains, but mainly goes into depth into exploring how the persona of the Child emerged in Victorian culture.

I found Erotic Innocence more engaging, but this is the necessary historical background to understand why we ended up where we are today. Or at least it’s one of the keys to understand.

A good complement to Steven Marcus’s The Other Victorians. Kincaid questions the fear that Marcus argues permeated Victorian culture (153-54).

[Countess of Frogmere · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting look at how children characters like Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan could be simultaneously innocent and erotically attractive.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

I approached this with an open mind, not aware of the criticism of Kincaid. Within 10 pages, I was convinced that the central argument of this book can be summed up as, "it is 'natural' to be a pedophile because society depicts children as innocent, and innocence is 'attractive.'" If that alone is not enough to make you run far, far away from this book, I suggest you do some serious self-reflection.

On a more serious note, I am very concerned by Kincaid's attempts to normalise pedophilia - and, further, to blame pedophilia on 'innocence'... I will not be at all surprised if Kincaid is at some point convicted for sexual crimes relating to children: this book is essentially a pedophilia manifesto - a justification for (his own?) pedophilic desire.

Particularly alarming, disturbing, and worrying lowlights of this book include:
"Pedophilia, by this reckoning, is located at the cultural center, since it describes the response to the child we have made necessary. If the child is desirable, then to desire it can hardly be freakish."
"the pedophile acts out the range of attitudes and behaviors made compulsory by the role we have given the child."
"I can see and feel that the enticing images of purity and almost formless innocence are fulfilled not simply in heaven, the virgin, and Ivory soap but in the child"

[Alba M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read years ago, never rated

[Erendira]

Main PR468.C5 K56 1992

Library also has link to e-book.

[Justin Abraham · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit too much deconstruction but very well written for an academic.
And the chapter on Peter Pan was a trip.

[Sannie Hald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read 'The Wonder Child in Neverland'