Innocence, Naivety, Directness: Children in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Fiction

Abstract

This essay argues that Warner’s frequent portrayals of children in her mid-century fiction, particularly her short stories, are closely connected with her sharp critiques of bourgeois conventionality (‘The Cold’, ‘Noah’s Ark’) and of fascism (‘Apprentice’, ‘View Halloo’). Thanks to their unembarrassed clarity of perception and direct self-expression, Warner’s children openly voice the aggression and/or heartless indifference shared by their (usually) politer elders. This dark vision is partly alleviated in Warner’s later work by stories in which children’s fresh perceptions allow them respond sensitively to the beauty of music, poetry, fur growing on a cat’s nose or a wild garden.