"The Making of Rebecca" and the Education of the Ideal Adult

  • Naomi Lesley

Abstract

In “‘The Making of Rebecca’: and the Education of the Ideal Adult,” Naomi Lesley undertakes a pedagogical and ideological exploration of the tensions inherent in Kate Douglas Wiggin’s consummately Romantic depiction of childhood, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.   Lesley focuses on the relationship between Wiggin as nostalgic author and Wiggin as educational reformer, and in the problematic constructions of both children and adults by those tensions inherent in American culture at the turn of the twentieth-century.  The subtle subversions of Romantic childhood by Progressive pedagogy—and vice versa—provide provocative areas for further discussion and scholarship. 

Author Biography

Naomi Lesley
Navid Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature. He has previously taught in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian.
Section
Alice's Academy