'That was what Life in Bridgeburn had Made Her': Reading the Autobiographies of Children in Institutional Care in England, 1918-46

Abstract

Historians and sociologists who have utilized self-narratives have frequently encountered the dilemma of providing either extensive quotation without analysis, or selective quotation to serve an analysis. New approaches developed after the challenge from post-structuralism are frequently flawed; for example, cultural analyses can be reductive, slotting personal accounts into categories of discourse. Although historians such as Mathew Thomson and James Hinton have emphasized the importance of individual subjectivity while acknowledging the constructed character of self-narratives, a productive new approach has failed to develop. Following psychologist Carol Gilligan’s Listening Guide, in this article I will conduct a close reading of four extracts from autobiographies written by subjects who were in institutional care in England as children between 1918 and the early 1940s. This method helps to solve our central dilemma by combining a consideration of the text as a whole with close analysis. Paying rigorous attention to these four texts as well as a range of self-narratives from children in care during this period may begin to illuminate our understanding of the experience of institutionalization, and how state welfarist policy that elided the distinction between the neglected and delinquent child might be negotiated by the subject in practice.