Feeling through Practice: Subjectivity and Emotion in Children’s Writing

Abstract

This article analyzes how children in 1930s' Britain narrated their everyday behavior, feelings and fantasies when asked to do so by their teachers. It is based upon a study of over one thousand essays that were written by children in 1937 and 1938, which were collected by the British social investigative organization, Mass Observation, as part of its Worktown Project. The argument is situated within the history of emotions and we interrogate the utility of recent conceptual frameworks for the better understanding of children's subjectivities. The essays show that children were able to juggle contradictory demands and expectations, learn emotional codes and match emotional style to spatial context when moving between school, home and leisure arenas. To some extent, then, children adapted and shaped their behavior to comply with specific emotional communities. However, we argue that this model offers only a partial account of children's emotional practices. In the second part of the article we suggest a move away from thinking about emotional communities or emotional styles as predominantly value-based and spatially-defined (by the school, home, streetspaces which children inhabited and might have influenced but which were conceived and built by adults) and argue instead for increased attention to be paid to the material context and, 2 particularly, the relationships that operated within and across these spaces. Ultimately, we argue, children's emotional experiences were less about "learning to feel" than feeling through practice.

‘I’d Keep Them Tidy’: Domesticity, Work and Nostalgia in Girls’ Imagined Futures Described in Essays Written by 11 Year Olds in 1969

“…ii Social historians are increasingly using children's writing as a resource, see Barron & Langhamer, 2017a, Pooley, 2015.…”

Shame and silences: children’s emotional experiences of insecurity and violence in postwar Finnish families

“…It is mostly adults, such as parents and teachers, but sometimes also peers in their groups, who conceive and construct norms and ideals that govern suitable emotional behaviour and expression. 39 From an early age, children learn to interpret and understand their experiences, including their emotional experiences. In different stages of their life, children undergo emotional socialization, which Peggy Thoits has defined as the acquisition of the emotional knowledge, values and skills that are appropriate to the children's age and gender, among other qualities.…”