Advertisement

Children's Literature in Education

, Volume 47, Issue 1, pp 36–49 | Cite as

Aidan Chambers’ Breaktime: Class Conflict and Anxiety in the Work of a Scholarship-Boy Writer

  • Haru Takiuchi
Original Paper
First Online:
  • 200 Downloads

Abstract

Aidan Chambers’ Breaktime (1978) is famous for its unique narrative style and sexual content. This focus has obscured another significant aspect of the novel: the role of social class in Breaktime and Chambers’ working-class background have rarely been explored. Chambers was an example of what Richard Hoggart calls “the scholarship boy,” a working-class boy educated in a grammar school in mid-twentieth-century Britain. In this article, Haru Takiuchi argues that Chambers’ scholarship-boy experiences are crucial for understanding Breaktime. For his analysis of the cultural and psychological aspects of class that concern representations of scholarship boys in British children’s literature of the 1960s and 1970s, he draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of class habitus, more focused studies of class in Britain and research into the experiences of scholarship boys. Using material from the author’s archive supplemented with interviews, Haru Takiuchi highlights Chambers’ unique representation of the scholarship boy and social class in the book.

Keywords

Aidan Chambers Breaktime Scholarship boys social class Pierre Bourdieu 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

References

  1. Bourdieu, Pierre. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London:Routledge (Trans. Richard Nice).Google Scholar
  2. Bourdieu, Pierre. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In John Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. (pp. 241–258). New York:Greenwood.Google Scholar
  3. Bourdieu, Pierre. (1993). The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. Cambridge:Polity Press.Google Scholar
  4. Bourdieu, Pierre. (1996). The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. Cambridge:Polity Press.Google Scholar
  5. Bourdieu, Pierre and Passeron, Jean Claude. (1979). The Inheritors: French Students and Their Relation to Culture. Chicago:Chicago UP.Google Scholar
  6. Bourdieu, Pierre, Darbel, Alain and Schnapper, Dominique. (1991). The Love of Art. Cambridge:Polity Press.Google Scholar
  7. Bourke, Joanna. (1994). Working-Class Cultures in Britain 1890–1960: Gender, Class and Ethnicity. London:Routledge.Google Scholar
  8. Chambers, Aidan. (1971). Letter to Richard Hoggart. TS. Box 28, Correspondence Folder. Aberystwyth:Aidan Chambers Archive, Aberystwyth University.Google Scholar
  9. Chambers, Aidan. (1973). Introducing Books to Children. London:Heinemann Educational.Google Scholar
  10. Chambers, Aidan. (1985). Booktalk: Occasional Writing on Literature and Children. London:Bodley Head.Google Scholar
  11. Chambers, Aidan. (1991). Aidan Chambers. In Joyce Nakamura (Ed.), Something About the Author Autobiography Series, vol. XII. (pp. 37–55). Detroit:Gale.Google Scholar
  12. Chambers, Aidan. (1992). Dance on My Grave. London:Bodley Head.Google Scholar
  13. Chambers, Aidan. (2007). Breaktime & Dance on My Grave. London:Random House.Google Scholar
  14. Chambers, Aidan. (2012). Personal Interview.Google Scholar
  15. Crowther, Geoffrey. (1960). 15 to 18: A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England), vol. II. London:HMSO.Google Scholar
  16. Deluca, Geraldine. (1979–1980). Taking True Risks: Controversial Issues in New Young Adult Novels. The Lion and the Unicorn, 3(2), 125–148.Google Scholar
  17. Dixon, Bob. (1977). Catching Them Young 1: Sex, Race and Class in Children’s Fiction. London:Pluto.Google Scholar
  18. Evans, Mary. (1991). A Good School: Life at a Girl’s Grammar School in the 1950s. London:Women’s Press.Google Scholar
  19. Furlong, Andy and Cartmel, Fred. (2007). Young People and Social Change: New Perspectives, 2nd ed. Maidenhead:Open UP.Google Scholar
  20. Garner, Alan. (1967). The Owl Service. London:Collins.Google Scholar
  21. Garner, Alan. (1980). An Interview with Alan Garner. Interview by Aidan Chambers. In Nancy Chambers (Ed.), The Signal Approach to Children’s Books. (pp. 276–328)). London:Scarecrow.Google Scholar
  22. Garner, Alan. (1990). Interview with Alan Garner. Interview by Raymond H. Thompson. Taliesin’s Successors. The Camelot Project. The University of Rochester. Retrieved May 9, 2010 from http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/intrvws/garner.htm.
  23. Greenslade, Roy. (1976). Goodbye to the Working Class. London:Marion Boyars.Google Scholar
  24. Greenway, Betty. (2006). Aidan Chambers: Master Literary Choreographer. Lanham:Scarecrow Press.Google Scholar
  25. Hipple, Ted. (2002). Aidan Chambers’s Breaktime: A Lost Masterwork by a Found Mater Craftsman. In Connis S. Zitlow (Ed.), Lost Masterworks of Young Adult Literature. (pp. 79–84). Lanham:Scarecrow Press.Google Scholar
  26. Hoggart, Richard. (1957). The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life, with Special References to Publications and Entertainments. London:Chatto and Windus.Google Scholar
  27. Jackson, Brian and Marsden, Dennis. (1966). Education and the working class: Some General Themes Raised by a Study of 88 Working-Class Children in a Northern Industrial City. Harmondsworth:Penguin.Google Scholar
  28. Lawson, John and Silver, Harold. (1973). A Social History of Education in England. London:Methuen.Google Scholar
  29. Leeson, Robert. (1977). Children’s Books and Class Society: Past and Present. London:Writers and Readers.Google Scholar
  30. Leeson, Robert. (1985). Reading and Righting: The Past, Present and Future of Fiction for Young. London:Collins.Google Scholar
  31. Long, Paul. (2008). Only in the Common People: The Aesthetics of Class in Post-War Britain. Newcastle:Cambridge Scholars Press.Google Scholar
  32. Mahony, Pat and Zmroczek, Christine. (1997). Why Class Matters. In Pat Mahony and Christine Zmroczek (Eds.), Class Matters: ‘Working-Class’ Women’s perspectives on Social Class. (pp. 1–7). London:Taylor.Google Scholar
  33. Medhurst, Andy. (2000). If Anywhere: Class Identifications and Cultural Studies Academics. In Sally R. Munt (Ed.), Cultural Studies and the Working Class. (pp. 19–35). London:Cassell.Google Scholar
  34. Nikolajeva, Maria. (2001). The Changing Aesthetics of Character in Children’s Fiction. Style, 35(3), 430–453.Google Scholar
  35. Pearson, Lucy. (2013). The Making of Modern Children’s Literature in Britain: Publishing and Criticism in the 1960s and 1970s. Surrey:Ashgate.Google Scholar
  36. Plummer, Gillian. (2000). Failing Working-Class Girls London:Trentham.Google Scholar
  37. Reynolds, Kimberley. (1994). Children’s Literature in the 1890s and the 1990s. Plymouth:Northcote House.Google Scholar
  38. Reynolds, Kimberley. (2007). Radical Children’s Literature: Future Visions and Aesthetic Transformations in Juvenile Fiction. Basingstoke:Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Russell, Mary Harris. (2008). The Spiritual Geography of Domestic and Narrative Spaces in Aidan Chambers’ Dance Sequence. The Lion and the Unicorn, 32(1), 61–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Trites, Roberta Seelinger. (2000). Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature. Iowa:Iowa UP.Google Scholar
  41. Walkerdine, Valerie. (1990). Schoolgirl Fictions. London:Verso.Google Scholar
  42. Westall, Robert. (1979). Fathom Five. London:Macmillan.Google Scholar
  43. Westall, Robert. (1992). Letter to Miriam Hodgson. MS. Seven Stories, Miriam Hodgson Archive MH/01/29. Newcastle upon Tyne.Google Scholar
  44. Westwater, Martha. (2009). The Dilemma of Melancholia. In Nancy Chambers (Ed.), Reading the Novels of Aidan Chambers: Seven Essays. (pp. 39–61). Stroud:Thimble Press.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.School of English Literature, Language & LinguisticsNewcastle UniversityNewcastle upon TyneUK

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options