Category: Writing

Breaking the Fourth Wall:
The Chidings of E. Nesbit in Five Children and It

E. Nesbit was already a successful novelist by the time she turned her hand to crafting works for children. Growing up in numerous towns dotting England and France, she led a relatively happy childhood until ultimately moving back to London. A socialist and partaker in a rocky marriage, Nesbit continued writing children’s books over the course of her lifetime, creating worlds of the fantastic that would inspire authors such C.S. Lewis. She wrote at least 40 novels and collaborated on many more until her death in 1924.

As a writer, I, too, deal primarily deal with the world of the fantastic, where mundane life is peppered with a little magic here and there. Nesbit was the same, taking inspiration from the reality that surrounded her and bringing in snippets of fantasy into her imagined realms. As a child one of my favorite books was Five Children and It, the tale of five young children who discover a Psammead – referred to as a sand-fairy – who, once a day would grant the children a wish. This, of course, becomes the ultimate conflict of the novel: the wishes never go quite as planned, such as when the children ask to be able to fly only to become trapped on a church steeple (all of wishes granted by Psammead ended at sundown).

What I found particularly fascinating about the novel was Nesbit’s propensity to “break the fourth wall,” or rather, have the narrator break narration to make some comment or social remark. While slightly jarring at times, Nesbit becomes something of a forceful Hans Christian Anderson – her work has moral lessons and some questionable asides – but rather than let the narrative always convey that moral, Nesbit at times might just tell the reader what to think:

This is why so many children who live in towns are so extremely naughty. They do not know what is the matter with them, and no more do their fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses, and nurses; but I know. And so do you now.

It is moments such as those that show a shift in narrative voice, one from that of the passive observer to authoritarian. Nesbit is at once informing us of the order of the world, but directly doing so by addressing the reader as though he or she was a child needed scolding. At times, it can be light-hearted information:

“’Humph!’ said the Sand-fairy. (If you read this story aloud, please pronounce ‘humph’ exactly as it is spelt, for that is how he said it).”

There are times, of course, that Nesbit seems to be aware of the extent of her voice. For example, she states “[l]ending ears was common in Roman times, as we learn from Shakespeare; but I fear I am becoming far too instructive.” This style of breaking the fourth wall has been mimicked by authors such Lewis, Carroll, and others.

This style and acknowledgement of occurrences of a magical nature by the other lends itself to creating a liminal space for the reader between the story and the storyteller. Nesbit embraces the concept of the uncanny, a type of fantasy described by Tzvetan Todorov in his classification of the genre. The uncanny, in this instance, is in the moments in which Nesbit breaks the fourth wall and confronts her readers; when readers realize there are magical explanations for the goings-on of the five children, and accept that the mechanics by which the world operates – fairy magic is real – [the work] becomes the opposite classification of the genre, known as the marvelous.

Is this style successful in Five Children and It, or does it break immersion for the reader and take away from the work? For me, it is a question of “telling” versus “showing;” Nesbit at times reveals perhaps too much information rather than give the reader an image with which to work:

I shall not tell you whether anyone cried, nor, if so, how many cried, nor who cried. You will be better employed in making up your minds what you would have done if you had been in their place.

On a personal level, this style did in fact put me off at times. One could certainly read these quips as a series of mere cheeky asides, but there were moments when I felt as though the book should have been titled Five Children, One Adult, and It. I wonder if her tone would remain the same had book been written not in 1902 but in 2018.

Ultimately, Five Children and It is playful romp that delivers a lively – albeit with a slightly forgettable cast of characters – story and, with the help Nesbit herself, some critique of her time period as well. Lines such as “You can always make girls believe things much easier than boys” give the reader a glimpse into what Nesbit’s society believed. I doubt strongly a sentence such as the previous quotation would make the cut for the contemporary children’s novel. These lines distract from the wonder and consequences of the children’s wishes: they are an interruption into a fairly simple narrative that could do without a chiding from its creator.

Still, E. Nesbit remains to this day a beloved author, cherished for her fantastical worlds; I appreciate her contribution to the field of children’s literature. She possessed the ability to straddle both the marvelous and uncanny as described by Todorov, even if her direct addressing of facts to the reader could sometimes detract from greater narrative. As a writer, I find myself avoiding this style, but nonetheless respect the story she was able to create in Five Children and It.

I hope this reaches her in time:

Truncation for Effect

 r.h. Sin’s collection of poetry, I hope this reaches her in time, is the journey of a broken heart, of grief, and of rebuilding one’s self. Its poems are terse and to the point, charged with an almost typical angst and “you’ll be okay” sentiment. However, its staccato pacing ties the narrative together through Sin’s truncation of sentences: there are brief spurts of emotion and pared fragments that – albeit briskly – make the collection cohesive.

While not uncommon, this short, fast-punch style suits the arcs of the narrative: being left by a loved one, grieving, anger, and moving on to self-confidence are all emotions delivered with a flow of consciousness voice. The opening poem “good women are tired of giving” sets the tone with a brevity that permeates each piece in the work, cutting through it with short verses such as “the girl who deserves the sun / is tired of being rained on.”

Much like Sin’s book a beautiful composition of broken, I hope this reaches her in time relies heavily on these truncated sentences to produce dramatic juxtapositions: often existing as fragments of sentences, the individual lines punctuate the narrative. These snippets serve as tiny dagger pricks that help convey the poignancy of emotion of the narrator: “aren’t you tired of this shit / the constant struggle / the feeling of loneliness.”

The majority of the poems in the collection, also, evade the usage of proper punctuation full stops, leaving each line on the page hovering in its own space without a sense of stopping. The lack of punctuation permits the reader to string these snippets together, even when they might not necessarily scan as a joint phrase and render a more complex meaning, creating a Joycean effect that reflects the narrator’s state of mind: “and so the loneliness / will grow from the emptiness / you feel / those nights will be the toughest / those mornings, even tougher / it’ll hurt, you should have loved her.”

One key technique throughout the poems seems to lie in the composition of the stanzas themselves; many of the poems start and end with lines that could be taken together, paired on their own. One could cut out the middle lines and glean the entirety of the individual poem. Take, for example, this eleven-line stanza:

and all of this for a love
that turned out to be hatred
all of this for a heart
that never deserved yours
all of this hurt
for a relationship
that would never work
all of yourself
all of everything
invested into something
that now feels like nothing

The efficaciousness of this poem lies in its repetitive nature [of fragmented thoughts], but is ultimately completed by combining the first and last line of the verse: “and all of this for a love / that now feels like nothing.” This technique is employed throughout the work as another form of truncation; the two opening and closing lines package up the meaning in a brief scanning of the poem. While there is some variation to this affectation – obviously notable in the shorter verses – this technique remains consistent throughout and produces a unique, curt effect that propels the narrative forward at a swift, almost frantic, pace: “we become content / deepening the bruises” and “i needed to find myself / while trying to keep you” are two such examples of the proactive nature of the narrator demonstrated through this curtailing of the verse.

Ultimately, the truncation of the lines in I hope this reaches her in time creates a staccato pace throughout the work. It successfully builds up momentum to express the spiraling emotions of the narrator up until the final poem, which is the most truncated of all: “until next time, talk to you soon… / (call ends…).” This ending creates a sense of the narrator experiencing short bursts of emotions and ties together the clipped speech throughout the work; I hope this reaches her in time becomes, in essence, a one-sided telephone conversation with the one who broke your heart.