Charles Kingsley had already contributed to children’s literature when he published his fantasy The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, first read as a serial in Macmillan’s Magazine between 1862 and 1863. His juvenile novel The Heroes had been written for his older children, while his youngest child is the land baby mentioned in the title of The Water-Babies.

Published two years prior to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the book was not free from moralizing, as would be Carroll’s popular works. It remained in the tradition of instructional literature for young readers and was actually aimed at the adult audience that would read it aloud for children. Its content suggested satire and contained symbolism that escaped young readers but appeared obvious to adults.

Its protagonist is a victimized working-class child named Tom who must elude an abusive employer. Tom’s brutal occupation of chimney sweep had been made infamous in the poetry of William Blake. Social movements had decried practices such as forcing naked children to fit into the tight chimneys where they contracted often-fatal lung diseases. Mostly orphans, many died from starvation, overexposure to the elements, and various infections that easily ravaged bodies without natural defenses.

Tom lives and toils in “the North country,” where he suffers constant hunger, filth, and beatings, does not read, write, or bathe, but occasionally plays with his mates and fantasizes about a successful future. During a visit to work at Harthover Hall, he enters the room of a sleeping “little white lady,” where he sees reflected in a mirror “a little ugly, black, ragged figure, with bleared eyes and grinning white teeth.” Incensed that such a “monkey” would enter the room of such a perfect girl, he realizes with dismay it is his own reflection. When the girl awakes and screams, he is chased away to the edge of a river.

Tom falls into the water, enjoying a symbolic rebirth, water traditionally suggesting baptism and the birth waters of the womb. There he undergoes transformation and a literal rebirth as a water baby in a fantasy world free of care. The freedom is both spiritual and emotional, as he undergoes internal and external “cleansing,” his tired limbs freed of all literal and figurative weight by the water. Tom “had been sadly overworked in the land-world; and so now, to make up for that, he had nothing but holidays in the water-world for a long, long time to come.”

He joins a large group of “water-babies in the thousands,” all rescued from abusive situations. Tom indulges his boyish propensity to tease and bother, learning he will receive his just reward for such actions by “Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid,” among others. When he regains land, the lessons he has learned serve him well. He finds friendship and a career as “a great man of science” before Kingsley appends a section titled “Moral,” explaining to his readers what they should learn from his “parable.” The story remains popular and has appeared in various media forms.

Bibliography

Hartley, Alan J. The Novels of Charles Kingsley: A Christian Social Interpretation. Folkestone, England: Hour-Glass Press, 1977.
Hunt, Peter, ed. The International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Categories: British Literature, Children's Literature, Literature, Novel Analysis

Tags: 19th-century literature, Alan J. Hartley Charles Kingsley, baptism in literature, Charles Kingsley, Charles Kingsley biography, Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies, children's fantasy classics, children’s rights literature, chimney sweep child labor, Christian symbolism, English literary history, fairy tale for a land baby, fantasy novel, Harthover Hall, industrial revolution, literary moralism, Macmillan’s Magazine serialization, moral allegory, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, Peter Hunt children's literature, social satire, The Water-Babies, The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, transformation in children's fiction, victorian children's literature, Victorian morality, water symbolism, William Blake chimney sweeps, working-class protagonists