Hasrat dan Nilai dalam Novel Trilogy Psammead Karya Edith Nesbit

In my skripsi, I will discuss the trilogy novel  “Psammead” by Edith Nesbit. Those novels are Five Children and It (1902), the Carpet and Phoenix (1904), and the Story of Amulet (1906). Those novels have different setting of place, and presence of parents. I want to demonstrate how influence from different place and presence of parent to characters of children in those novels.

On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved center: of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness, and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. (William, the country and the city)

Actually, in Five Children and It, in some chapters I found some problems there. In chapter 1 “Beautiful as the Day”, the children wanted to be “beautiful” and they asked to their Fairy “Psammead” to grant their wish.

"I wish we were all as beautiful as the day” (Nesbit, 12)

Psammead granted “beautiful” to be “Grow up” and in the end when they came back to their home, Martha, who was their servant did not know them and drove away them. In “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” by Jacques Lacan, he said that “The child at an age when he is for a time, however short, outdone by the chimpanzee in instrumental intelligence, can nevertheless already recognize as such his own image in a mirror”.  Although they still “child” but they can see themselves in the mirror or they looked each other to recognize themselves. Lacan, in his essay, also stated the child could recognize themselves in the child’s own body, and the persons and things around him. For example, the child from the age at 5 months, when at the age he should crawl on hands and knees, but he wanted to stand up. It showed that he (the child) saw he person around him who can stand even run, and he wanted to follow that person. It same with the children in the novel “Five Children and It”, they wanted to be beautiful when they saw people around them, and one of them is Martha (the servant). It seems they wanted to do by their own selves, then they did not know what to do so that they came back to their home, but Martha did not notice and drove away them.

There are some points in this first chapter of “Five Children and It” that I want to find out. Why they want to be beautiful as an adult? When they became adult, why Martha did not know them even drove away them? Is it related that an adult can make a lie but the child not?

In chapter 2 “Golden Guineas”, they asked to “Psammead” want to be rich and “it” gave many of gold to them. In the end, they cannot buy anything they wanted, because it is unreasonable to them to have many of gold, even they accused as thief. They always fail and fail to reach what they wanted. In the last chapter “The Last Wishes”, when the “Psammead” asked them about the last wish they have, they think first before they speak. In the beginning, they wanted some gold to their mom, but they afraid their mom will be accused as a thief like them (it’s like they learned something).

            “…and the children had been in London for two years, without so much as once going to the seaside even for a day by an excursion train, and so the White House seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set down in an Earthly Paradise. For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not rich.” (Nesbit, P2)

From that novel, I can see that the writer want to show different class there at that time. It related with the writer’s ideology. Nesbit is a Fabian, she wanted to show that “money is everything” at that time in that novel. It can be seen in chapter 2 when they wanted to be rich, but they failed and accused as the thief. Nesbit joined with Fabian Society in 1883. Those novels written after she joined Fabian Society.

sources:

Nesbit, E. (1993(reprint)). Five Children and It. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Edition

Lacan, Jacques. “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience”.

Williams, R. (1973). The country and the city. New York: Oxford University Press.