From Folktales to Fiction: Orphan Characters in Children's Literature

Library Trends, Wntr, 1999 by Melanie A. Kimball

NOTES

(1)This idea stemmed from a conversation with Christine Jenkins at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois sometime in early 1998. We discussed coming-of-age stories and she postulated that orphans find a home instead of breaking away from one.

(2) Janice Del Negro suggested the idea that Colin functions as an Enchanted Prince figure in a conversation about this project in Autumn 1998.

(3)In the course of reviewing this article, the guest editor asked if I thought Mrs. Sowerby was the Fairy Godmother. My initial reaction was in the negative, but as I re-read the catalog of what she actually provided the children, I reasoned that she acted as much like a Fairy Godmother as the stock character we have come to think of in relation to Cinderella. Mrs. Sowerby is not overtly magical, but there is something otherworldly in the way she "observes" the children from a distance and in the stories about them told to her by others.

(4) There are more than fifty orphans because some stories have more than one orphan as a character.

(5) Some orphans succeed by more than one means. For instance, their virtue may lead to their being kind to a supernatural creature who will later reward them by helping them prosper.

(6) These categories were created by the author and are not meant to correlate with similar categories found in the motif and tale type indexes.

REFERENCES

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