  {"id":556012,"date":"2023-04-18T09:05:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-18T13:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=556012"},"modified":"2026-03-08T14:04:29","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T18:04:29","slug":"dangerous-children-in-fiction-kenneth-gross-556012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/dangerous-children-in-fiction-kenneth-gross-556012\/","title":{"rendered":"When fictional children become stranger things"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_556032\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-556032\" style=\"width: 1000px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-556032\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/kenneth-gross-dangerous-children_2000w.jpg\" alt=\"Diptych of Kenneth Gross's headshot alongside the book cover art for Dangerous Children: On Seven Novels and a Story.\" width=\"1000\" height=\"765\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/kenneth-gross-dangerous-children_2000w.jpg 2000w, https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/kenneth-gross-dangerous-children_2000w-630x482.jpg 630w, https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/kenneth-gross-dangerous-children_2000w-768x587.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/kenneth-gross-dangerous-children_2000w-1536x1174.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-556032\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Through teaching Rochester undergraduate students and writing <\/em>Dangerous Children: On Seven Novels and a Story<em>, \u201cI was inventing for myself ways of bridging the gap between books for children and books for both children and adults,\u201d says Kenneth Gross. (Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ photo by J. Adam Fenster \/ Book cover design by Rae Ganci Hammers adapted from Ievgen Chabanov&#8217;s photo for Alamy Stock Photo)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Teaching an undergraduate class on \u2018dangerous\u2019 children in literature inspired English professor Kenneth Gross\u2019s latest book.<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"attachment_556122\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-556122\" style=\"width: 350px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-556122\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/inline-alice-in-wonderland-john-tenniel-dangerous-children-469x630.jpg\" alt=\"Line drawing from Alice in Wonderland of Alice, one of the Dangerous Children identified by Kenneth Gross in his latest book, holding a flamingo as a croquet mallet with a hedgehog at her feet. \" width=\"350\" height=\"470\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/inline-alice-in-wonderland-john-tenniel-dangerous-children-469x630.jpg 469w, https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/inline-alice-in-wonderland-john-tenniel-dangerous-children-768x1031.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/inline-alice-in-wonderland-john-tenniel-dangerous-children.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-556122\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Alice from Lewis Carroll\u2019s <em>Alice in Wonderland<\/em> trying to play croquet with a flamingo and hedgehog. \u201cThe landscape of Wonderland is the best place to begin\u201d exploring the notion of dangerous children, says Gross. (Illustration by John Tenniel via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/114\/114-h\/114-h.htm#alice30\">Project Gutenberg<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201c\u2026 a student once wrote to me \u2026\u201d \u201c\u2026 a student once reminded me \u2026\u201d \u201c\u2026 a student once said to me \u2026\u201d \u201c\u2026 one of my students felt \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sas.rochester.edu\/eng\/people\/faculty\/gross_kenneth\/index.html\">Kenneth Gross<\/a>\u2019s latest book routinely acknowledges the insights and contributions of his <a href=\"https:\/\/rochester.edu\/\">Ä¢¹½´«Ã½<\/a> students. That\u2019s because <a href=\"https:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/D\/bo176397533.html\"><em>Dangerous Children: On Seven Novels and a Story<\/em><\/a> (University of Chicago Press, 2022) was inspired by his teaching of an undergraduate class \u201cin a more fundamental way than anything else I\u2019ve ever written,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>The book takes the title of the 200-level course that Gross, the Alan F. Hilfiker Distinguished Professor in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sas.rochester.edu\/eng\/\">English<\/a>, has taught three times, most recently in spring 2022. Students read and analyze texts in which the authors imagine childhood, especially stories centering on the figure of a dangerous, strange, or uncanny child. \u201cWhat is dangerous in them is no one thing, and keeps on changing,\u201d he writes in the prologue. It often lies simply in how adults <em>see<\/em> them as dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>The class includes works spanning nearly a century, starting with Lewis Carroll\u2019s <em>Alice in Wonderland<\/em>, published in 1865, and ending with Vladimir Nabokov\u2019s <em>Lolita<\/em>, which came out in 1955. The book follows this outline, with Gross dedicating a chapter to each of eight works that have regularly appeared on the syllabus: Carroll\u2019s <em>Alice<\/em>, Carlo Collodi\u2019s <em>Pinocchio<\/em>, Henry James\u2019s <em>What Maisie Knew<\/em>, J. M. Barrie\u2019s <em>Peter and Wendy<\/em>, Franz Kafka\u2019s \u201cThe Cares of a Family Man,\u201d Richard Hughes\u2019s <em>A High Wind in Jamaica<\/em>, Elizabeth Bowen\u2019s <em>The Death of the Heart<\/em>, and Nabokov\u2019s <em>Lolita<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Three of the selected children (Alice, Pinocchio, and Peter) belong to stories written with child readers in mind\u2014though they\u2019ve always drawn passionate adult audiences\u2014and the other five come from works written for adults. And notably, each child\u2019s fictive career ends before they can ever come of age on the page.<\/p>\n<p>Through teaching the class and writing the book, \u201cI was inventing for myself ways of bridging the gap between books for children and books for both children and adults,\u201d says Gross. \u201cBut I also tried to find a language that would bridge audiences of scholars, students, and general readers.\u201d<\/p>\n<h3><strong>The paradox of the uncanny child<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Written in an open, essayistic, narrative style and incorporating the author\u2019s digressions, obsessions, personal anecdotes, and even fictions, <em>Dangerous Children<\/em> aims to capture some of the energy of the classroom. His students, Gross recalls, \u201chad such wonderfully surprising and idiosyncratic responses to the books.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_556132\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-556132\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-556132 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/inline-pinocchio-alice-carsey-dangerous-children-630x398.jpg\" alt=\"Line drawing of Pinocchio, another of Kenneth Gross's Dangerous Children, throwing a hammer at the talking cricket. \" width=\"630\" height=\"398\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/inline-pinocchio-alice-carsey-dangerous-children-630x398.jpg 630w, https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/inline-pinocchio-alice-carsey-dangerous-children-768x485.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/inline-pinocchio-alice-carsey-dangerous-children.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-556132\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pinocchio throws a hammer at the talking cricket in Carlo Collodi\u2019s <em>Pinocchio: The Tale of a Puppet.<\/em> Collodi\u2019s protagonist is, Gross says, \u201cmuch weirder and more desperate, more violent and also more vulnerable\u201d than the Disney version. (Illustration by Alice Carsey via <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/cache\/epub\/16865\/pg16865-images.html\">Project Gutenberg<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>What intrigued\u2014and sometimes shocked\u2014them was how these literary children could upend their own long-held assumptions. \u201cThey expected the children to be innocent, cute, or adorable. Or they were familiar with gothic or sci-fi children who are evil, demonic, or monstrous. But it was that playful or uncanny middle space between the innocent and the demonic that really fascinated them,\u201d he says. Particularly when that playful middle space clashed with the students\u2019 own childhood memories of or experiences with the texts.<\/p>\n<div class=\"pullquote\">His students \u201cexpected the children to be innocent, cute, or adorable. Or they were familiar with gothic or sci-fi children who are evil, demonic, or monstrous. But it was that playful or uncanny middle space between the innocent and the demonic that really fascinated them.\u201d<\/div>\n<p>\u201cThey would be astonished to discover, for example, that Pinocchio was so much weirder and more desperate, more violent and also more vulnerable, than they\u2019d been taught by Disney,\u201d Gross says. Indeed, he adds, \u201cOne student who had searched out the original text of <i>Pinocchio<\/i> online thought at first that she was reading a piece of fan fiction.\u201d (Spoiler alert: In Collodi\u2019s story, Pinocchio kills the cricket, among other instances of violence. And while Gross avoids spoilers in class, he warns readers that the book is necessarily replete with them.)<\/p>\n<p>In Gross\u2019s account, fictional children can become ideal carriers or occasions for experiencing the Freudian notion of the \u201cuncanny,\u201d that feeling of strangeness that is nonetheless rooted in familiarity, in ordinary things\u2014a notion central to Gross\u2019s 2011 book, <a href=\"https:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/P\/bo11674038.html\"><em>Puppet: An Essay on an Uncanny Life<\/em><\/a> (University of Chicago Press). <em>Dangerous Children<\/em> gave him a chance to expand his thinking by exploring the different shapes the uncanny can take with child figures: from playful to nonsensical, feral to haunting, secretive to exposed. \u201cThese fictional children ended up teaching me about myself, my own unconscious, and my own mind and obsessions\u2014they point to forms of thought and play that remain part of one&#8217;s life as an adult,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>So, will Gross offer the course again? Or is it time for him, as is said<strong>,<\/strong> to \u201cput away childish things?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I teach it again, I\u2019d want to change many of the texts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition to numerous examples from mythology, fairy tales, and poetry, he cites the writings of contemporary authors like Maurice Sendak, Shirley Jackson, and Toni Morrison. \u201cThere are lots of other strange children out there for the students to read and think about. The one thing I know is that I\u2019d still have to start with Alice. The landscape of Wonderland is the best place to begin.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Teaching an undergraduate class on \u2018dangerous\u2019 children in literature inspired English professor Kenneth Gross\u2019s latest book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":556022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13092],"tags":[20542,29502,2666,2276,18572,16072],"class_list":["post-556012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-arts","tag-department-of-english","tag-featured-post-side","tag-kenneth-gross","tag-literature","tag-research-finding","tag-school-of-arts-and-sciences"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>When fictional children become stranger 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