Abstract:
This thesis discusses the emergence of a separate and gendered children’s literature in
late nineteenth and early twentieth century Victorian era. The existence of different
literatures written for boys and girls is discussed through the ways in which the imperial
ideology of Britain shapes the construction of gender roles as part of the nation’s future
imperial policy: while Victorian militant masculinity shapes the identity formation for
boys, the Victorian appropriation of the Romantic construction of child and motherhood
as the Victorian female ideal shapes the identity formation for girls. The restructuring of
public schools, the role of educational reforms, and the ideological function of reading
and its influence on the subjectivity of the reader constitute the other foundational
elements of the argument.
