The Water Babies (Award Gift Books)

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Initially written for Kingsley’s four-year-old son and published just three years after Darwin's ' On the Origin the Species', which shook Victorian Christian beliefs. Like Darwin, Kingsley took a keen interest in nature and science, some would even argue that this novel mirrors Darwin's theories on evolution, only in this case in the afterlife. Tom evolves due to education by his elders and experience. However, this is also a Christian parable that warns against the dangers of not being baptised in the Christian faith and the merits of treating others as you would want to be treated and the notion of eye for an eye. Tom is a young chimney sweep who, through a series of improbable events, becomes a water-baby and goes thorough all sorts of adventures, all of which have morals to teach, before becoming a creature of the land again, as a grown man. It is a Victorian moral fable and although it's stated that it's aimed at children, and has a fairly simplistic style, it is interspersed with philosophical tracts and concepts that would go right above the head of most children. I may never finish those last chapters. If I were writing a dissertation, yes. For pleasure, no. Absolutely not.

It also has a very dismissive attitude towards Americans, Jews and (particularly) the Irish (although seems keen on the Scots) which makes for some unpleasant reading. And as is Eversley Wood to all the woods in England, so are the waters we know to all the waters in the world. And no one has a right to say that no water-babies exist, till they have seen no water-babies existing; which is quite a different thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever will do."

THE END

Los personajes no están muy desarrollados, pero realmente eso no importa en este cuento de hadas victoriano. El peso de la trama lo adquiere el sinsentido una vez la fantasía queda en segundo plano. La consecución de temas escatológicos culmina en una escena en la que Tom ha de reencontrarse con su mayor miedo y ayudarlo. Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last twenty-five years, that a flying dragon was an impossible monster? And do we not now know that there are hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world? People call them Pterodactyls: but that is only because they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after denying so long that flying dragons could exist.” The book ends with the caveat that it is only a fairy tale, and the reader is to believe none of it, "even if it is true". folks have a great liking for those poor little efts. They never did anybody any harm, or could if they Charles Kingsley se vale de la historia de Tom, un crío victoriano obligado a trabajar como deshollinador desde una temprana edad para un tal Grimes, para narrar una historia infantil llena de moralejas pero sin moraleja (incomprensible, lo sé) y realizar diversas críticas sociales; la esclavitud infantil, el sistema educativo de la época, la teoría de la evolución de Charles Darwin y la racionalización del mundo fantástico llevada, según Kingsley, por la sociedad estadounidense. También subyace una simplona crítica hacia los irlandeses y el catolicismo, pero creo que esta última viene más por la profesión del propio Kingsley y su orgullo británico y temperamento flemático que por un odio real hacia los irlandeses y el catolicismo.

La necesidad del autor de justificar que existen los niños del agua no me pareció del todo mal, pero la forma de proceder no me gustó nada. Su crítica estaba llena de comentarios despectivos y pedantes hacia los racionalistas o aquellos que se abisman en la fantasía sabiendo que son una ficción. Esta humilde pagana cristiana debe confesarle, señor Kingsley, que ve completamente lícito abismarse en una ficción conociendo su naturaleza irreal. ¿O es que acaso es menos valioso el objeto que nace de mi mente que el que es obra de la Naturaleza?

But, count for what exactly? For nothing at all of course. Kingsley seems to have believed that you attain some kind of moral status by piling up good actions one after another (all without wanting to of course). What a sad fallacy for such an intelligent man to propound. No matter what we do in this life, we’re all so far short of moral perfection that we all pretty much look the same from the viewpoint of moral purity. The Water Babies, the Reverend Charles Kingsley’s 1862 novel about the young chimney sweep, Tom, who finds redemption from the horrors of his work by means of becoming an aquatic creature, is one of those perennial children’s classics that is not so perennial any more. In parts political tract, scientific satire, Christian parable as well as children’s fantasy, it is a moving and uncomfortable book when read as child, and is even more unsettling when read as an adult. It emerged from a sense of social outrage, took on the big questions of belief and biology, and is eye-catching for a work by a 19th-century vicar in that reveals a world created and ruled not by gods, but by goddesses. Not only did it have a huge effect on young readers, it also helped to reform legislation that relieved the suffering of innumerable young people such as Tom, who had been forced to crawl inside chimneys to keep them clean.

I have no idea what edition I read as a child, but I do know that I harbor huge nostalgia about the book's weird adventures and pen and ink illustrations. Every time I see the title at a used book sale, I reflect on my childhood.

CHAPTER IV

Se han de tener algunas consideraciones presentes antes de hablar sobre la obra de Kingsley. Para empezar, este caballero británico de pura cepa publicó dos años antes que Lewis Carroll su Alicia, por lo que se trata de un precursor del sinsentido y no de un influenciado. Aunque el viaje del deshollinador de Kingsley puede traernos ecos de las aventuras de Alicia, Kingsley no tuvo un delirio artístico tras leer a Carroll ni tampoco trató de imitar o superar a Lewis Carroll. A no ser que fuera un viajero en el tiempo, claro. When I read that Charles Kingsley and Charles Darwin had been friends, I was so disappointed. Why? Why didn't dear Mr. D pull aside Mr. K and gently offer a sort of "I say old boy! This is bananas!" You know. Like they do. Or should have.