Genre and Ideology in Elizabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse

Abstract

Genre and Ideology in Elizabeth Goudge's The Little White Horse Teya Rosenberg (bio) When, in the "Forgotten Authors" issue of The Lion and the Unicorn (1997), Megan Lynn Isaac makes a plea for recuperating the children's works of Elizabeth Goudge, she notes that Goudge's books are "balanced on the threshold between the ordinary, the fantastic, and the mystical" (91). In terms of genre, Isaac's description applies well to magical realist writing, a form that includes such works for adults as One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967), Beloved, by Toni Morrison (1987), and The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967). Children's literature, however, has not been included in discussions of magical realism, nor have studies of children's fantasy taken into account discussions of magical realism, and Goudge's work exemplifies one reason for this neglect. Like much of children's literature, and unlike most works termed magical realism, Goudge's work does not have a "gritty" tone or a liberal political stance. It does not obviously critique tyranny or oppression. Ideologically speaking, Goudge's work seems conservative, a nostalgic looking back to an ordered, hierarchical time that probably exists more the imagination than in the reality of English country life. The Little White Horse (1946), Goudge's most famous children's work, demonstrates a desire for a return to values that seemed to create order and structure in the past, including the central role of the Church in social life, the rights and responsibilities of the landed gentry, and the unquestioning acceptance by all people of their place in society. Combined, however, with those conservative elements is an idea important in post-Second World War British society and politics: the sharing of whatever wealth exists, in an ideology Isaac calls "economic justice" (98). Thus, while the novel may initially seem entirely nostalgic, it actually speaks of and to its time and the concerns of that time, suggesting a remedy to the chaos and upheaval, economic and social, of British society during and immediately after the Second World War. That Goudge's remedy comes from what might be called old politics, based on ideas suggested by John Ruskin, keeps it from seeming political, for by the mid-twentieth century, his ideas were no longer revolutionary. And yet, are those ideas any less political because they are no longer new? This question is important, for in a great deal of children's literature, the politics are subtle and ideological stances are so familiar as to be nearly invisible. Examination of The Little White Horse as magical realism thus raises the question of what we mean by the term "political" when we look at a work, and such an examination encourages us to think about how we label or categorize a work that responds to its time in a conservative rather than a liberal manner. Further, the novel benefits from being examined as a magical realist text, for doing so reveals its subtle structures and ideas, and demonstrates that despite its initial appearance as a charming but slight work, it has substantial elements of genre and ideology to communicate. Understanding magical realism expands our understanding of The Little White Horse and simultaneously encourages a reconsideration of what constitutes magical realism by introducing a work that uses the techniques (but not necessarily the ideological stance) commonly attributed to the form. Examining The Little White Horse as magical realism requires turning to the many studies of the form that focus on literature for adults, for while the study and defining of magical realism in adult literature has been ongoing throughout much of the past century, there have been no such studies of children's literature. In early discussions, Latin American writers defined the form in terms of the geography and culture of their countries (Alejo Carpentier 1975, Luis Leal 1967, Apuleyo Mendoza and García Márquez 1983). More recently, as the form has become favored by writers from many different parts of the world, definitions have changed as critics have looked to the formal qualities that constitute magical realism (Chanady 1985, Spindler 1993, Faris 1995). Critics have also considered its presence in literatures of...