Enlightenment’s MonsterShelley, Frankenstein, and the

Monsters of our Own Making as Precursor to the Adolescent

Almost 200 Years

• 1818 Frankenstein[149 years]

• 1967 The Outsiders[3 years]

• 1970 The Bluest Eye[23 years]

• 1993 A Lesson Before Dying[6 years]

• 1999 Monster[7 years]

• 2006 American Born Chinese

Almost 200 Years

• 1818 Frankenstein[72 years]

• 1890-1920 invention of the adolescent in according to Baxter[47 years]

• 1967 The Outsiders

Almost 200 Years • 1775-1783 American Revolutionary War

• 1779 John Friedrich Oberlin and Louise Scheppler found first Infant school in Strasbourg

• 1789-1799 French Revolution

• 1798 Bell/Lancaster Method of “mutual instruction”• c1800 On- room School House in the US (and around the world) until middle of 19th century• 1802 Wordsworth writes “My Heart Leaps Up”• 1814 Compulsory Apprenticeships in England abolished• 1816 English Robert Owen starts infant school in Scotland for basic literacy and morals• 1818 English John Cobbler starts teaching poor children

• 1818 Frankenstein

• 1833 English Parliament allocates first amount of funds for public education of poor (contrast to Scottish Program of Universal Education since 1561)

• 1834 Bronson Alcott opens his school with assistance from Peabody and then Fuller• 1837 Friedrich Frobel opens up his Play and Activity institute (later renamed “Kindergarten”)• 1837 Horace Mann made Secretary of Education in Massachusetts.• 1848 Introduction of Graded Education based on Prussian Common School Methods• 1840s English Grammar Schools Act expands curriculum to include science and literature• 1840s Common School Movement in US (Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, and others) • 1850 first compulsory school laws in the US• 1856 First Kindergarten in US conducted in German in Watertown, Wisconsin• 1860 Elizabeth Peabody opens first US Kindergarten in English• 1861Civil War Begins • 1862 First Morrill Act in the US• 1865 Civil War Ends• 1865 Establishment of the Freedman’s Bureau in the US• 1870 English Forster Elementary Education Act • 1880 English Elementary Education Act (compulsory schooling for ages 5-10)• 1890 Second Morrill Act in US

• 1890-1920 period Baxter focuses on as the time in which the concept of “adolescence” invented in the US

The Enlightenment “The Age of Reason”

• Late 17th century late18th century but some argue it was a permanent turning point.

• Intellectuals stressing reason and individualism

• Francis Bacon (1562-1626), Rene Descartes (1596-1650), Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), John Locke ( 1632-1704) Voltaire (1694-1778), Isaac Newton (1643-1727)

• Rationalism vs tradition/ science vs faith• Legacies: centrality of the mind. Separation

of mind and body/ denunciation of superstitions, traditions, and that which is not knowable via human senses and reasoning, rights of the individual self, the sovereign self-ruling nation.

• John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau• Immanuel Kant (1784) “What is

Enlightenment?”• Counter movement will be Romanticism

which also made major use of the child.

John Locke “Father of Classical Liberalism”

• English Philosopher 1632-1704• End of preformation/ man forms himself/

self governance• Major blow to the central authority of the

Church• Rational Man• Tabula Rasa (mind originally a blank slate)• Empiricism and Experience how we form

ideas (the world is knowable through our senses, and the consciousness of the mind makes ideas and identity based on sensory experience and observation)

• Two Treatise on Government 1689• An Essay Concerning Human

Understanding 1690• Some Thoughts Concerning Education

1693

Jean-Jacques Rousseau • 1712-1778 Genevese

Philosopher

• A Social Contract(1762) & “the general will”

• Emile, or On Education (1762) • The Napoleonic Wars and

French Revolution (1789-99) down with the French Monarchy

• Fear in England

• The garden child fits well with Americans in new world and ideas of a new Eden

Exemplary Quotes• John Locke

“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding).

“For, first, it is evident, that all children and idiots have not the least apprehension or thought of them; and the want of that is enough to destroy that universal assent, which must needs be the necessary concomitant of all innate truths” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding).

“He that attentively consider the state of a child at this first coming into the world, will have little reason to think him stored with plenty of ideas that are to be the matter of his future knowledge. It is by degrees he comes to be furnished with them . . .” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding).

Exemplary Quotes• Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves, let their qualities be tested and confirmed, before special methods are adopted. Give nature time to work before you take over her business, lest you interfere with her dealings” (Emile).

“The real world has its limits; the imaginary world is infinite. Unable to enlarge the one, let us restrict the other, for it is from the difference between the two alone that are born all the pains which make us truly unhappy” (Emile).

“The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for their preservation. A soon as this need ceases, the natural bond is dissolved. The children, released from the obedience they owed to the father, and the father, released from the care he owed his children, return equally to independence. If they remain united, they continue so no longer naturally, but voluntarily, and the family is then maintained only by convention. . . . The family then may be called the first model of political societies: the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the children: and all, being born free and equal, alienate their liberty only for their own advantage” (Book 1, Sec 2 of The Social Contract).

Exemplary Quotes

• Immanuel Kant“Enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority” (“What is Enlightenment?”).

Birth of a Monster• 1775-1783 American Revolutionary War• 1779 John Friedrich Oberlin and Louise Scheppler found first Infant school in

Strasbourg• 1789 French Revolution Begins• 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication for the Rights of Women• 1793 William Godwin publishes his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, and its

Influence on General Virtue and Happiness (between Burke and Paine)• 1794 William Godwin publishes Things as They Are: or, The Adventures of Caleb

Williams (first thriller)

• 1797 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly Born to Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin

• 1799 French Revolution “ends”• 1798 Bell/Lancaster Method of “mutual instruction”• c1800 On- room School House in the US (and around the world) until middle of 19th

century• 1802 Wordsworth writes “My Heart Leaps Up”• 1814 Compulsory Apprenticeships in England abolished

• 1814 Mary Shelly meets (the married) Percy Bysshe Shelly• 1815 Mary gives birth to first child, a daughter who is premature and dies soon after

birth• 1816 Mary gives birth to the second child William• 1816 English Robert Owen starts infant school in Scotland for basic literacy and

morals

• 1816 Mary and Percy spend Summer with Lord Byron in Geneva• 1816 Percy’s wife commits suicide and Mary and Percy are Married• 1818 English John Cobbler starts teaching poor children

• 1818 Frankenstein

Birth of a Monster• Pretty and Ethereal

• The Favorite “From the cradle, surrounding adults regarded the child as peerless, imbued her with pride in her parentage, quickened her by their expectations, and emboldened her with intimations of her lucky star” (21).

• Esteemed visitors Coleridge and Charles Lamb

• Vast Library Spencer, Sidney, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Byron, and her father wrote stories and text book for her and her siblings.

• Opinion and Independence Encouraged

• Father lead by reason and high ideals

• The Harry Potter Effect + Blue Ivy Effect

Birth of a Monster• “The most radical precept Mary Godwin incorporated from her father

was to act as she believed right, defying the world if necessary—and most of her major heroines, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, were to do so. With the fundamental exception of Godwin’s views on females, Wollstonecraft would have instilled many of his other concepts in Mary. Wollstonecraft, however, would have feared and warned Mary of the consequences. Given ‘the dependent and oppressed state of her sex,’ she had said when Fanny was a baby, ‘I dread to unfold her mind, lest it should render her unfit for the world she is to inhabit.’ But . . . [i]t does not seem to have occurred to [Godwin] that Mary might come into conflict with the world, much less with himself, and he underestimated the penalties for women, as he did the power of passion, illusion, and despair” (Sunstein, 44).