On the road with Jack Connor

Abstract

Education and children’s literature were connected in this period, both dedicated to assisting parents in bringing about the transformation of the irrational, malevolent child (the ‘child of wrath’ discussed in earlier chapters) into the civilised, Christian adult. This chapter examines the ways in which the emphasis on the child’s moral and intellectual education, which found powerful expression in one of the most popular devotional texts in British history, The Whole Duty of Man, influenced the Irish Protestant campaign to establish networks of schools (charity and Charter schools) to bring the values of Enlightenment Protestantism to Irish Catholic children, and also into the representation of Irish childhood in fiction. The chapter will take the reader through the most influential of these texts, while also examining one of the earliest of Irish novels to deal extensively with regulatory mechanisms including parental influence, devotional texts, catechisms and, in particular, educational establishments. The History of Jack Connor (1752), by William Chaigneau, can be described (loosely) as a novel of education, and has recently been recognised as one of the most important texts in the early history of the Irish novel. This chapter looks at educational influences on Jack, including his absorption of one of the most popular British devotional texts, his experiences in Protestant households and schools, and the negative influence of his Catholic mother, and argues that the novel’s endorsement of catechisms and schools is rather more half-hearted and qualified than previous commentators have claimed. Jack Connor is treated here as a case study where the discourses of enlightenment, education, civilisation and modernisation of both individual children and Ireland (as an allegorical child) converge.