Baby Tuckoo among the Grown-Ups: Modernism and Childhood in the Interwar Period

Abstract

First of all, a question: can you name the author and date of the following extract?

Oh hush thee, my baby,

Thy cradle’s in pawn:

No blankets to cover thee

Cold and forlorn. (lines 1–4)

Answer — Cecil Day-Lewis, from his 1935 poem ‘A Carol.’ But it could just as easily have been written at any time since the late eighteenth century, so familiar is the sentimental content and the simple verse form. Despite the establishment of Modernism in the wake of World War I, the use of idealized children to contrast with the corruption of adult society remained a literary convention even for writers such as Day-Lewis who was conversant with Modernist techniques. This essay focuses upon the relationship of the child to Modernist aesthetics, but it does not argue as Virginia Woolf did ‘that in or about December 1910 human character changed’ (‘Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown’ 70). Instead, it concentrates upon the new, artistic strategies that were devised to represent character: changes that were embedded in new conceptions surrounding the origins of human identity and the relationship of the child to the adult. Although the theme of identity has been frequently explored in relation to Modernism, the role of the child has rarely been examined (see Dusinberre; Vloeberghs).