Unsettled Norms and Unstable Positions: Miniature People in Children's Literature

• Author / Creator

  Morris-O'Connor, Danielle A.

• From the earliest miniature narratives in English literature, there has been an insistence on miniature people’s inferiority to and dependence on big people and the big world, and the conclusion that big people will always be dangerous and destructive to miniature people because of this innate hierarchy built into their differences in scale. This narrative residue permeates miniature people children’s literature, affecting the representation and presentation of narrative voices, fictional worlds, the position of the child, relationships between characters, and perceptions of otherness The miniature world is constantly pressured from all sides by the oppressive perspective of the big world. However, the big world is also influenced by the miniature world. It is filled with miniature homes, miniature voices, miniature worlds, and miniature eyes. Miniature people see and perceive simultaneously from within both the big and miniatures worlds, creating points of unsettledness and instability in miniature narratives and subverting assumptive norms and hierarchies. These holes created in miniature narratives by miniature people’s interrelationship with big people reveal the constructed nature of the supposed innate hierarchy that still has strong residues in miniature narratives today.

  I argue that with a focus on miniature people’s voice, unsettled positionality, and interrelation with the big world, the hierarchy of scale that first appears so ingrained and absolute is unveiled, and in some cases even unraveled. Using a timeline of miniature narratives that I constructed, I track the residues of big people’s dominance over miniature people, how it is manifested in miniature narratives, and how space can be created for miniature people to subvert the hierarchies imposed on them. As I progress through my timeline, the influence of these residues becomes more subtle but no less influential, and the miniature’s voice must become louder and more confrontational to continue to redirect the typical trajectory of the miniature narrative. Yet, even in texts that deplete the miniature people’s voice, these characters leave points of unsettledness and contradiction in their narratives that unearth the entrenched myth of the hierarchy of scale.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • children's literature
  • miniature people
  • English literature
  • norms
  • othering
  • big child
  • narration
  • focalization
  • possible world
  • possible miniature world
  • hierarchy of scale
  • narrative residues
  • race

• Graduation date

  Spring 2023

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-spch-vq32

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.