House Rules
The emergence of an American fictional literature written and illustrated exclusively for children—and meant to cater to their appetites for amusement while at the same time inculcating desirable traits—was an essential nineteenth-century phenomenon. As American adults became convinced that their children were the inheritors of prospects unique in human history, they began to reexamine every aspect of childhood and child-rearing to ensure that subsequent generations would rise to the promises and contests of the future.
Thus arose a novel canon of picture books for early instruction, which were intended “to lay the foundation on which the whole superstructure of individual and national greatness must be erected,” according to William Cardell, a nineteenth-century folk artist. Such popular publications are valuable indicators of prevailing moral and social principles: as opposed to artistic and literary productions created by professional, “high” artists, they were unfettered by academic concerns that might obscure prevalent parental conceptions.
Mary Hibbs Snyder’s (1811–1844) Books of Poems for Her Children and Spring: Shuttlecocks and Marbles typify this literary and artistic mode, given their obvious handmade quality and moral didacticism. The introductory inscription in each book notes that Snyder completed them “during her last sickness and in great suffering.” Perhaps compelled to leave a dying legacy of instruction (it was considered the domain of women to provide for the moral training of the young), Snyder compiled and illustrated a collection of some well-known and some original verses.
Snyder’s watercolors and poems expand upon the themes highlighted elsewhere in this discussion of children and folk portraits, especially regarding gendered differences. For instance, many of Snyder’s watercolors establish explicit female and male spheres, with the two genders often assigned entirely separate illustrations and verses. While girls are pictured walking through a verdant garden animating their dolls, boys are seen launching toy ships in the adjacent panel. Similarly, girls learn to carry “honey pots” as boys “shoot the target in the eye” on the same page.
Although such moments clearly uphold historical conceptions of distinct male and female realms, Snyder does picture both boys and girls venturing outdoors. In this way, she heeds the advice of contemporary physicians and childcare experts, who early in the nineteenth century began to suggest outdoor play as a form of exercise for both boys and girls. Indeed, Lydia Child, a popular author of period advice manuals, devoted two pages of The Mother’s Book to the topic: “I am aware that many people object to such plays as I have recommended to girls, from the idea that they will make them rude and noisy.” Still, Child goes on to qualify her statement in a way that reinforces boy/girl distinctions: “When I say that skating and sliding are proper amusements for girls, I do not, of course, mean that they should mix in a public crowd. To snow-ball, or slide, with well-behaved brothers, I am sure tend to make a girl rude and boisterous.” Snyder’s watercolors reflect Child’s sentiments: Her illustrations exalt the benefits of outdoor activities for all children while still reflecting the lingering belief that they were essentially masculine in character.
Snyder’s watercolors also reflect ideals of Christian morality, which is understood to have suffused nineteenth-century children’s literature. Particularly, Snyder, like many of the parents of her day, hoped to impart to her children an awareness of the Christian tenets of humility and charity and an acute reverence for the Sabbath day. On one page of her handbook, she suggests that to “make their own salvation sure / on the judgment day,” her children should “be mindful not to envy the rich, the proud, nor the great,” and to be “happy and content with their low estate.” Snyder also depicts churches and steeples in the backgrounds of several illustrations, subtly manifesting the Christian belief that abounds in her verses.
Snyder concludes her watercolors with a bright illustration of a peacock, which in many folktales represents immortality and resurrection. In doing so, perhaps she meant to bequeath to children she would not see grow to maturity a kind of symbolic good luck charm.
Works Consulted
Archard, David. Children: Rights and Childhood. Routledge, 2014.
MacLeod, Anne S. A Moral Tale: Children's Fiction and American Culture 1820–1860. Archon Books, 1975.
Young, Terrell A., et al. “Children's Books: Folk Literature: Preserving the Storytellers’ Magic.” Reading Teacher, 57, no. 8 (May 2004): 782–92, www.jstor.org/stable/20205435.
