Summary Of A Child's Garden Of Subversion

In her essay, “A Child’s Garden of Subversion,” Cornell professor Alison Lurie reminds adult readers of the ‘sacred texts’ of childhood, which “recommended—even celebrated—daydreaming, disobedience, answering back, running away from home and concealing one's private thoughts and feelings from unsympathetic grown-ups” (Lurie 131). Such subversive books “overturned adult pretensions and made fun of adult institutions, including school and family” (Lurie 131). In other words, these books are unlike the moral didactic books, wherein a ‘bad’ child undergo a pivotal occurrence ultimately making them seek out help from their caregivers, and reforming them into a ‘good’ child; however, realizing that this philosophy is irrational, authors of subversive works celebrated the fact that children are indeed, children and should be children to their fullest potential while they are in this “unusual, partly savage tribe, ancient and widely distributed” (Lurie 130).

One example of this is shown in Annie Barrow’s Ivy and Bean series, specifically Ivy and Bean: Bound to Be Bad, in which both Ivy and Bean set out on a daylong quest searching for their innate goodness and vowing to not look back on their past unscrupulous and rambunctious natures.

The girls ambition was to be so “good that birds land on [her] fingers and wolves come out of the woods and follow [her] down the street” (Barrow 28), just as Noah was recognized as the man who directed two of every living creature into his ark, a safe dwelling from the flood of waters which flowed from the rivers of heaven to cleanse the earth of its iniquity. But for a moment let us explore what it is to be exactly good or

bad.
What does it mean to be good or bad? I once heard the statement that good and bad is only relative to the culture, in which you are submerged in and cannot be deemed based solely off of a dictionary denotation. This is a simple case of ethical relativism a philosophical theory that “holds that morality is relative to the norms of one's culture…That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another” (SCU). This concept of ethical relativism varies from country to country, culture to culture, religion to religion, and even more narrowly, every household.
For example, the forces beyond Bean’s control that coerced her gustatory senses to taste the “streaks of leftover syrup” on her plate for breakfast (Barrow 7), Crummy Matt’s maltreatment of Blister, Katy’s kleptomaniac inclinations, etc. does not make the children ‘bad’, and neither does it determine if their behavior is objectively ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. However, in American culture such acts are considered to be immoral and unethical, or in other words, not socially acceptable. From the moment we are emerged from our mother’s womb into this sublunary big, blue marble we are undergoing a process of internalization that teaches us norms and conventions we are to reverently follow, and deviances we should abstain conforming to. The societies, in which we reside has a great deal of influence on what we judge as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, but such ways of thinking is mostly attributed to adults. Children on the other hand, are not defined solely by their cycle of socialization as adults are, and in Ivy and Bean: Bound to Be Bad, which advocates that children be children and that adults should teach children how to think for themselves and express themselves in their youth without having to be anxious rather or not they are being accepted or conventional.
Children are free-spirited eggs in a shell anxiously waiting for that shell to crack so that they can free themselves and truly be genuine representations of their inner-self’s. Bean was at constant warfare with her internal self all throughout the story, a war that her external side always suffered defeat and her internal side was the flawless victor. She had a difficult time changing who she was just to be accepted, and no child should live their life’s trying to please everyone, because it is impossible to do so and in the end they will be the ones unhappy and displeased with themselves. Childhood is supposed to be fruitful with the aim of achieving “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22), not trying to achieve social acceptance and be ‘good’ as society itself defines it for us. Who are we as adults to limit kids from being kids, and prevent them from fully experiencing the wonders of childhood? Although it is true that there are limitations to this notion, there are also limitations to how we should be training our children up and selfishly shaping their paths for them.