Introduction to the Eternal Child

Individually, we were each intrigued by the appearance of either a dead child or an immortal child when examining works of children’s literature. We found these figures particularly relevant as indicators of adult anxieties toward death. We thus wanted to examine why these figures appear

within children’s literature and what information can be gleaned from them. Due to the fact that each of these figures occupy a space that lasts eternally, combined with  the abundance of similarities between the two, we grouped them together under the term the eternal child. Drawing on Philippe Aries’ argument that beliefs toward death have changed over time (Western Attitudes Toward Death), we reasoned that the eternal child, as an indicator of these beliefs, might change in function over time as well. To examine this, we selected texts from the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries that use the eternal child. Initially, we believed that the eternal child would simply play a role in separating the adult sphere from the child’s, expressing the adult anxiety of permanent separation from the child and child death. This notion was suggested in Celine-Albin Faivre’s essay, “The Legacy of Phantoms, or Death as a Ghost Writer in Peter and Wendy.” However, what we found was that the eternal child, through his or her death or immortality, is given access to fantastic spaces. While the texts we examined from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did allow a distinction and separation from the adult, our twenty-first century texts indicated that these fantastic spaces were no longer privileged for the child. We interpreted this change in use of the eternal child as resultant of a change in adult attitudes toward the child’s death. While in earlier centuries the child’s death must be accepted, in later periods the adult does not wish to see the child meet death alone. Therefore, in these later time periods, the eternal child is not isolated from the adult.

Throughout the nineteenth century, literature has revealed that the concept of the eternal child was first formed through death itself. In other words, death served as a means to create a separate space between childhood and adulthood. This separate space prevented children from becoming corrupted by the responsibilities, pressures, and knowledge that come with maturing in society. Rather, death preserved a child’s purity and innocence. As a result, child death was viewed as beautiful and divine in many ways during this time period. Philippe Aries describes this concept in his Western Attitudes Toward Death. According to Aries, a young teenager in the romantic era was quoted as saying:“‘The favorite idea of my entire life [as a child] is death, which has always made me smile…”(Aries 60). This romanticism of death carried through the time period and displayed itself prominently in literature published during the nineteenth century. For example, many of Andersen’s fairy tales display a central child figure whose death is seen as beautiful and joyful. Andersen’s “The Angel” and “The Little Girl with the Matches” are just two of many examples. Both of these tales depict a young child that has gone through much hardship and pain in life. By accepting death, these two figures are given the opportunity to be happy and joyful in the afterlife. They escape the pains of life and never become tainted by the struggles of adulthood. Instead, the children remain pure, innocent, and joyful in the afterlife. Overall, death served as a barrier between childhood and adulthood throughout the nineteenth century. Death preserved a child’s innocence and protected them from dealing with the constraints of adulthood.

Looking at the early twentieth century, we examined Peter and Wendy byJ.M. Barrie as a model text. In and around this time period, the Edwardian Era, the well-being of children became a focus for society, especially psychologists, doctors, and teachers. Consequently, the books of this time period, a part of The Golden Age of Children’s Literature, were created as a result of children’s general unhappiness. Literature, like Peter and Wendy, helped give back the lost hopes and dreams of children through the creation of imaginary worlds separated from adult influence and death. In this text, Peter Pan is an eternal child allowing escape to a fantasy world of Neverland, a place where the eternal child could escape death. This imaginary space allowed children to escape the constraints of adulthood and death to just be children. The children in this realm no longer have to be proper for adults, listen to adults, or follow the rules set by adults. Peter and Wendy is a story used to escape reality for children. According to Celine-Albin Faivre’s “The Legacy of Phantoms, or Death as a Ghost Writer in Peter and Wendy,” she states that, “Never Land is a mirror where we see our psyche.” This sentence shows us that Neverland is a gateway into our subconscious mind. This subconscious mindset reveals a place where children are allowed to be kids, free from adult rules and supervision. This subconscious mindset is also a place where children can elude and evade death. All in all, the texts we examined from the early twentieth century continued this use of a separate space with the concept of immortality. Here, the separate space allowed the eternal child to never grow up. However, unlike our nineteenth century texts, the eternal child of this time could avoid death altogether.

Bridge to Terabithia, as a text of the late-twentieth century, serves as a bridge between our early-twentieth century text, which allowed for imagined lands that children created to serve as a separate space from adult-worries, and our twenty-first century texts, which sought to remove this separation of space.  Instead, Bridge to Terabithia was created in a way that did not seek to censor the realities and sufferings of everyday life like death, moving away from family and friends, and differences in economic and social class. These realities came with, as well as defined, adult life. However, there are obvious similarities between our early and late twentieth century texts. For example, Neverland in Peter and Wendy, like Terabithia, is an imaginary place where children have the agency to create their own rules as well as build upon precedent rules. This idea of giving agency to children in stories served as a way to feed into the twentieth century values of giving back hopes and dreams to children. After WWII and the Cold War though, the world was seen as a dangerous place. As this view changed, it only makes sense that the way that people wrote about the world would change too, and children’s books were no exception. Death became a reality of life, and Bridge to Terabithia highlights the fact that death was inevitable, even in imagined lands. Leslie's death allowed the cycle of eternity to continue in Terabithia because the land became a place that she would forever belong. Through the creation of imaginary worlds, Terabithia became separated from adult influence. Leslie’s death in Terabithia, and the establishment of her as an eternal child, solidified the imagined space’s rules, and allowed Terabithia to exist beyond her death as a fantastic space.

We finally looked at texts from the twenty-first century, specifically J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Steve Niles’ Breath of Bones. Both texts differ from those we previously observed in that the eternal child in both of these texts is only a temporary eternal child, and the fantastic spaces these eternal children access are not separated from the adult. For instance, in Deathly Hallows, Harry becomes an eternal child when he sacrifices himself to save his friends. In doing so, Harry dies but reaches a limbo state that is separate from, and even more fantastic than, his world. It is in this limbo that Harry is given the unique choice to either pass on to death or return to life. However, it is important to note that Dumbledore is also present in this space, indicating that it is not free from adult influence. Furthermore, Harry chooses to return to life, meaning he does not persist as a true eternal child. This creation of a pseudo-eternal child seems to be used to accent Harry’s self-sacrifice, indicating that the eternal child here is used as a way of emphasizing value sets.

A similar function of the figure can be found in Breath of Bones. In this text, another pseudo-eternal child is created in the character of Noah, who overcomes his fear and temporarily becomes impervious, an eternal child, while fighting alongside a mythical golem. In this case, fearlessness is the value being emphasized. However, the final image of the graphic novel shows Noah as an adult reconstructing a golem, suggesting that the adult Noah still has access to the fantastic realm that he reached when he was a child.

This decreased separation of the child from the adult, especially the refusal to let the child die without the adult, indicates societal views on death at this time. Aries argues that in the twenty-first century death has become “forbidden of its public manifestation” (Aries, 92), and that it is a thing to be ignored, an act of repugnance. Within this view, Aries holds that the child is then kept away from truly seeing death. In the figure of the eternal child that we examined in texts from this time, these views on death can be seen manifesting as a refusal for the adult author to kill the child, or even have him or her spend too much time in death. This leads to the creation of a pseudo-eternal child. The child may be exposed to death, which is a progression from Aries’ beliefs, but he or she is still not allowed to die. And if the child is to see death, or to even touch it in Harry’s case, he must be comforted by the adult, tying into the popularized belief that children do not understand death when confronted with it.

Overall, examining the figure of the eternal child allows one to see the shift in adult values towards the child and towards death. In our  nineteenth and early twentieth century texts, the eternal child allows for separation between adulthood and childhood. The prominent existence of the eternal child in these texts indicates a willingness to create the eternal child, suggestive of the constant presence of death during these times and the lack of adult sheltering of children. However, in our late twentieth and, more obviously,  twenty-first century texts, there is a trend toward decreasing usage of the eternal child as a way of separating adult and child. Instead, it is used as a way of teaching a lesson or conveying values. There is also a decreased tendency to use the eternal child figure, indicating an increased desire to protect the child from having to fully experience death. 

Works Cited:

Ariès, Philippe. Western Attitudes toward Death, from the Middle Ages to the Present. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1975. Print.

Fiavre, Celine-Albin. “The Legacy of the Phantoms, or Death as a Ghost-Writer in Peter and Wendy.” Barrie, Hook, and Peter Pan: Studies in Contemporary Myth, Ed. Alfonso M. Corcuera, Elisa T.  Di Biase. New Castle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.