그로테스크를 통한 사회비판―찰스 킹즐리의 『물의 아이들』

Abstract

Abstract

This thesis investigates Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies, focusing on how he appropriates “grotesque” in order to criticize his contemporary society, the Victorian society filled with social problems, such as child labor, the gap of classes, poverty, and the conflict of religious beliefs and scientific knowledges. Although The Water-Babies has been known as a work for children, the thesis shows the text is not just for children but adults readers in that the writer implants his idea of an alternative world to the Victorian society in a critical attitude. Kingsley depicts a water-world where all the norms of the Victorian society are challenged. The child protagonist Tom of a chimney sweeper, who is transformed into a water-baby after dying from an accident, comes to realize how unfair and violent the social order and structure of the Victorian society are. By emphasizing the grotesque aspects of the water-world in which ironical phenomena, such as the coexistence of life and death, beginning and ending, are never negated, he digs out the rich potentiality that grotesque embeds rather than enjoying the new world of fantasy he creates. Through Tom’s adventure in the water-world, which is a test for him to live in that world, the writer helps the reader see the unfairness and violence in his own society. Yet Kingsley does not attempt to suggest an Utopian-like alternative world to criticize his world. Rather, the thesis argues, he claims the importance of multiple viewpoints that fantasy and grotesque is able to provide beyond our understanding of the world, which might be dominated by the existing social order and norm.