"It Was Very Queer!": Queering Time and Family Structures in Mrs. Molesworth's The Cuckoo Clock

Abstract

Abstract: Mrs. Molesworth's fantasy for children, The Cuckoo Clock (1877), is a bildungsroman that premises the protagonist's development on her ability to manage her time and navigate queer, or non-normative, family structures. An enchanted cuckoo in a clock guides the protagonist toward a more flexible understanding of time and family structures by posing temporal riddles that stretch her imagination and welcoming her into queer communities of enchantment. Drawing on recent turns in queer kinship studies and Victorian studies, I read the novel through its frequent use of the word "queer" to describe fantastic phenomena. I also introduce the concept of "temporal didacticism" to describe a didactic impulse in children's literature to curtail a child's natural inclination to queer time in favor of instilling values such as patience and punctuality. In this case study, I argue that temporal didacticism occurs more gently here than in similar Victorian texts for girls.